smooth normals for toon shading

[infoN7AZD]

any chance we can smooth normals like this in arnold? this example here is a c4d setup, where the head mesh is inheriting the normals from an egg-shaped proxy mesh. the problem is, it doesn't work when the mesh gets subdivided at render time, because the normal tag gets overwritten by the sds object. also it only works in object space, in order for it to hold up for character animation purposes it would have to work in tangent space. a workaround would be to animate a simplified invisible proxy mesh along with the character, but the sds issue would still exist.

i consider this the holy grail of toon shading, since the too detailed shading edges always give it away immediately that it's a 3D render.

i just started exploring arnold for toon shading and i really like it, would be so awesome if this was possible.

[giandosopaolo]

This is very interesting actually, I am also interested 😄

[1214455649]

Complex but the result is the same！