Overview

With SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2021, we have added the ability to render your designs with a “toon” or non-photo-real look, using sketch-like edges and some various shading variations.

Toon settings are part of camera filters tab.  To access them, go to the Camera properties, Filters sub-tab and there is a small expander section for Toon. 

As part of the Camera Filters properties, this means you can save toon settings to be used in other projects, and use them with configurations to achieve a variety of looks while always maintaining all your primary appearance assignments.

There is a primary checkbox to enable or disable toon for the given camera.

Followed by this there are some quick-selection presets for a few different styles, which simply use various combinations of the remaining controls: Edge Color, Shading Style, Toon Detail, and Color Override.

Edge Color is obvious.  Important to note, is that there is no control over the edge thickness or precisely how it will be displayed.  It is intended to provide a “hand sketch” type of look, where depending on your camera angle, not all model edges will be drawn entirely.  Some may fade away, or not display at all.  In other words, this is not the equivalent to a pure HLR view that you would get in SOLIDWORKS Cad.

Shading style has 3 options:

• Normal: This basically means that the shading of parts in the scene will use whatever your current appearance assignments are.  There are no other options besides Edge Color enabled when using Normal Shading Style.
• Toon Shaded: This will render your assigned appearances using an Albedo render pass.  You will generally see diffuse colors and textures, with a matte shaded type of appearance.
  • Toon Detail: At the default value of 0, there is no actual shading on the parts so colors will appear flat.  As you increase the Toon Detail value, a faux surface shading effect is applied giving a banded shading effect to the surfaces.
  • Color Override: When disabled, the diffuse shading is based on your current appearance assignments.  When enabled, this will allow you to specify an overall shading color, which will temporarily override your current appearance assignments.
• Plain Shaded: This will continue to use a full shading method with full shadows, but temporarily override your current appearance assignments with the selected color.

Toon disabled
 

 Toon enabled.  Black Edges preset.  Edge color: Black Shading style: Normal

White on Black preset.  Edge color: White. Shading style: Toon Shaded.  Toon Detail: 0.  Color Override: Black.
 

Black on White preset.  Edge color: Black.  Shading style: Toon Shaded.  Toon Detail 0.  Color Override: White

Ambient Occlusion preset. Edge color: Black. Shading style: Plain Shaded. Color Override: White

Custom settings. Edge color: Black. Shading Style: Toon Shaded.  Toon Detail: 10.  Color Override: White

Limitations

As previously mentioned, the toon edges can only have their color changed.  You cannot change line thickness or the way in which the lines are drawn.  Also, there is no way to have the faux toon shading style or plain shaded override by itself, without having toon edges on as well.  And while there is no toon specific setting to achieve a Toon Edges only look (transparent model), this can be achieved by setting a model (or just specific parts) to have opacity of 0. 

There were also some significant changes in Beta 2, that generally improve how Toon is being rendered. We would certainly recommend using Beta 2 to test out this feature.

Conclusion

Hopefully you find the new Toon feature handy.  You can generate some non-photo realistic content which can be beneficial in providing early "conceptual" looking renders as opposed to giving an impression of a finalized design.  You can also use post, to combine photo-real and toon effects for some intriguing product illustrations.  Let us know what you think!!