Corona 13 Toon Shading: Stylized Renders with Toon & Outline

POSTED 28th OF Aug, 2025, Posted by Summer

Corona 13 Toon Shading: How to Create Stylized Renders with Toon & Outline Materials

Rendering has always been about pushing boundaries, whether that’s achieving hyper-realism or experimenting with new artistic styles. With Corona 13, artists now have a powerful way to step outside the photoreal box and explore stylized, non-photorealistic rendering (NPR).

The highlight of this release? Toon Shading and Outline materials. These tools let you add a clean, cartoon-like look to your renders, perfect for early drafts, work-in-progress presentations, animations, or simply as a stylistic choice.

In this guide, we’ll break down what toon shading is and how it works in Corona 13 and share practical tips to get the most out of it in 3ds Max and Cinema 4D.

Why Toon Shading Matters in ArchViz and Beyond

Not every project needs photorealism. In fact, sometimes realism can even get in the way:

Conceptual stages: Show design intent without locking in final materials.
Client communication: Focus on form, proportion, and layout instead of details.
Stylistic freedom: Use NPR to achieve comic-book looks, cel-shaded visuals, or playful drafts.
Expectation management: Present options without clients assuming it’s the finished product.

Corona’s new Toon features give you flexibility to pivot between realism and stylization all within the same toolset.

Corona 13’s Two Core Toon Tools

Toon shading in Corona is built on two materials that can be used independently or together:

Toon Material: Defines the "cartoon" look of objects, with flat colors, ramps, and simplified shading.
Outline Material: Adds bold contours and edges, perfect for cel-style animation or illustrative renders.

You can:

Use Toon Material alone for clean NPR looks.
Use Outline Material alone on photoreal renders to highlight shapes.
Combine both for full cartoon stylization.

Applying Toon & Outline Shading

Individual Objects

Just like any material, you can assign Toon or Outline materials to single objects. This is useful if you only want stylization in certain areas of your scene.

Entire Scene

For larger setups, Corona provides override slots:

In 3ds Max: Find outline overrides under Scene → Environment Overrides.
In Cinema 4D: Look under Scene Environment at the bottom menu.

Plug the Outline material into the override slot, then the Toon material into the material override slot for a global cartoon look.

Pro Tip: Using the global override affects everything, but using Outline overrides lets you control line effects separately from base materials.

Key Parameters to Explore

Both Toon and Outline materials come with parameters that shape your final look:

Outline Material

Outline Color: Solid color or textures (e.g., hand-drawn effects).
Outline Width: Adjustable by pixels, world units, or percentage.
Opacity & Texture Maps: Great for creating sketchy, variable line work.

Toon Material

Diffuse & Ambient Colors: Define base color and “environmental” tint.
Diffuse Ramp: Controls shading transitions across light angles.
Specular Ramp: Fine-tune reflection highlights in stylized ways.
IUR (Index of Refraction): Set to 1.0 to disable reflections for flat cell looks.
Light Color Replacement: Overrides actual light color with your own artistic choice.

Tips & Tricks for Better Toon Renders

Play with Lighting:
Small directional lights create sharp, posterized edges, while larger lights give softer transitions.
Avoid Monotony:
Use Corona Multimap/Multishader for varied toon colors across objects.
Dynamic Outlines:
Use distance maps so outlines get thicker near the camera and thinner farther away. This is especially powerful in animations.
Optimize Render Settings:
Corona defaults are tuned for realism. For Toon renders, try lowering max sample intensity and max ray depth for cleaner NPR effects.
Mix Overrides:
Exclude specific objects from global overrides to apply custom Toon/Outline materials for extra control.

Toon Shading for Animation

The Toon system isn’t just for stills. Corona 13’s materials are designed to work smoothly in animations, making it easier than ever to create stylized explainer videos, archviz walk-throughs, or even short films with a hand-drawn look.

What This Means for Artists

The addition of Toon and Outline materials in Corona 13 is more than just a new rendering option; it’s a creative shift. Whether you’re presenting early architectural drafts, producing animation, or experimenting with comic-book-style visuals, Toon shading gives you freedom without leaving Corona’s familiar workflow.

Experiment with parameters, lighting, and overrides; you’ll be surprised how versatile this system can be.

Download Corona13 Today!

FAQs on Corona 13 Toon Shading

Q: Can I combine Toon and photoreal renders in one scene?

Yes. You can apply Toon to specific objects while keeping others realistic for hybrid visualizations.

Q: Does Toon shading work in animations?

Absolutely. Both Toon and Outline materials are designed for stills and animations.

Q: Is it supported in both 3ds Max and Cinema 4D?

Yes. The workflows are slightly different, but the features are the same.

Q: Can I use textures with Toon materials?

Yes. You can plug textures into ramps, outlines, or opacity slots to achieve sketchy or painterly effects.