Shader Output As Shader Factor

Support Compositing and Post Processing
1

[Edit: Looks like I put this in the wrong section. Can this be moved to the Materials and Textures forum?]

Hi Everyone,

I’m testing a Cycles material with a Mix Shader, and I’d like the Factor to be controlled by a black and white image. However, so far the best way that I’ve been able to produce the Factor image I’d like is by using the Toon BSDF shader. This would be fine, except that the Toon shader has the green-colored output, which doesn’t work well with the gray-colored Factor input on the Mix Shader.

Is there any node or method that you can use to turn the green shader output into a gray or yellow output that I can use for the Factor on the Mix Shader?

I could always render the result of the Toon BSDF shader, then bring that back in as an Image Texture, but if I could do this in the material/node editor itself, that would save a lot of time.

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Green to the green- that’s basically the only unbreakable limitation in Cycles nodes. Unfortunately you’d need to resort to a baking or create some masking noodle allowing to imitate Toon.

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That’s what I figured, eppo, thanks.

I did find a way around it, though:

I remembered that you can set up a Render Layer where all materials are overridden by one material. So I made a simple material that uses the Toon BSDF shader, did a Render Layer with that, and used that result as a Factor value in the Compositor instead of in the material editor. That means I don’t have to render and then bring back in an Image Texture for the Factor value.