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Is Cycles toon shader more accurate than Blender internal toon shader?

I,m currently working on a Webcomic and would like to have my characters as 3D characters in a 2 tone cell shading style. This is to save time as I'm a one man outfit at the moment. I would like my renders to be of high quality so i am not sure whether to use Cycles or Blender internal toon shading. Can someone please explain which one will give me better results?

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  • $\begingroup$ Cgcookie have an small training course mostly for freestyle but also a bit about cell shading in general: cgcookie.com/blender/cgc-courses/… It's not free but well worth the money. $\endgroup$
    – Gunslinger
    Commented Jan 7, 2014 at 11:16

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At this point, it's really most dependent on which material system you're more comfortable with. With Cycles' node system and OSL, you can achieve just about any look you'd like... and render times are reasonable if you set you reduce bounces to zero and use direct lighting techniques (i.e. do lighting as if you were rendering in Blender Internal). That said, it's often faster to set up toon materials in Blender Internal if you're already familiar with the system.

Furthermore, if you want Blender to generate your linework for you, Blender's Freestyle system is currently only supported with Blender Internal. However, if you want to use Cycles shaders with Freestyle, it's not that difficult (use a duplicate scene with linked data, render using BI and Freestyle, and composite the results with your Cycles scene).

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    $\begingroup$ Small correction here (because Blender's developers move quickly). Freestyle also works in Cycles now. $\endgroup$
    – Fweeb
    Commented Apr 23, 2015 at 11:34
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While it's possible to use Cycles to create a toon-shaded look, since your stated goal is saving time, it would probably not be helpful. Cycles just isn't well suited to the task. A tool that is better suited to the task is Freestyle (http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.6/Manual/Render/Freestyle), which is only available for the Blender Internal renderer, ATM. Freestyle is specifically designed for creating a cell-shaded look, unlike Cycles.

Good luck!

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    $\begingroup$ Freestyle is only suitable for the linework. The material shader itself isn't handled by Freestyle. $\endgroup$
    – Fweeb
    Commented Jan 6, 2014 at 20:59

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