How to setup lighting for a "carboard animation" look?

[pieq]

Hello,

I’m fairly new to Blender. I’m working on an animation using scanned images (made by my daughter) imported into Blender using the “Images as Planes” plugin.

I’m using Eevee, and I would like to have a very flat lighting, as if I was animating in 2D. I’ve tried the following:

• Remove all the light sources, and play with the World Surface Strength parameter
• Use a Sun light

However, in both cases, the renders look very bleak, lacking contrast.

Here is a preview of my scene using a Sun light:

Here is the render obtained:

https://i.imgur.com/yqdzVHa.jpeg

And here is the original scanned image:

https://i.imgur.com/tDCkBBy.jpeg

Since I want to achieve a cartoon look, I probably don’t need anything fancy (shadows, volumetric lights, blooms, etc.), but I would like to have a contrast close to the original image. Is there a way to achieve this?

Thanks in advance!

[joseph (J)]

Don’t use any lights- plug your image directly into Material Output, no shaders needed. Set your color management to Standard instead of Filmic. That should do it

[sozap]

To better illustrate what @joseph said , here is a screencapture :

[pieq]

Thanks a lot for your tips!

I just tried, and there aren’t much differences in terms of colors:

• At the top, the same scene as in my first message (using the standard Principled BSDF shader and a sun light)
• At the bottom, the sunlight has been deactivated, and the background picture is not using a Principled BSDF shader anymore (I followed @sozap sample shader)

While tinkering with the shaders, I discovered the Color Management panel of the Render properties. By changing the View Transform from Filmic to Standard, things begin to change. Now, I can see a difference between the version with the Principled BSDF shader and the version without. And if I tweak the Look (to Medium Contrast) and the Exposure, I get something pretty close to the original!

However, by deactivating the Principled BSDF shader, I don’t know what to do with the alpha channel. As you can see, the scene is made up of different planes, each of them being a png file with an alpha channel. I don’t know where to plug the Alpha from my image to get the alpha in the material output. (this is not visible in the sample above because the background picture I’ve modified the shader of has no transparent parts)

Any idea on how to get the alpha back? (If not, I’ll keep using Principled BSDF shader and tweak the color management rendering properties instead!)

Thanks

[sozap]

Hello !

@pieq

However, by deactivating the Principled BSDF shader, I don’t know what to do with the alpha channel. As you can see, the scene is made up of different planes, each of them being a png file with an alpha channel.

Ok, if you need alpha you can try to do that differently, the first method, while being the simplest doesn’t allows for transparency.

we plug the color in the emission slot, so it doesn’t react to light anymore , and plug the alpha into the principled transparency

On top of that , make sure the Base color is pure black, and specular is set to 0.

If that doesn’t work we’ll try another way !

Good luck !

[pieq]

Yes, it seems to work well! I put the Look property of the Color Management panel back to None, and that looks OK now.

Thanks a lot!