Question - Sin City Style
nubianbdsmart
Posts: 60
So lately Ive been playing around with a Sin City look and feel. What I usually do is create the images in color and then go in later and edit the black and white effect. The problem is, that many of my comics have anywhere from a 100 to 200 renders. So this can be quite time consuming. I was thinking of going into the Daz software and changing everything to a grey color, except for things like red lips or blue eyes, things of this nature. I'm not even sure how that would look.
My question has anyone ever tried something like this? Is this the quickest way or is there something I can purchase from Daz to get this look a little easier.
I uploaded 2 examples of what I'm talking about.
Any advice would be appreciated!
Thanks!
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
I believe there is a way with Iray to make the image grayscale (I got a successful test by just setting "Saturation" to 0). But adding splashes of color is still going to require postwork.
In theory, you could modify all your maps to grayscale, make sure all the color channels are a shade of gray except the ones you want, etc, but this requires a lot of pre-production work.
I haven't got this product but it renders your renders in monochrome which may make things quicker for you, of course being Sin City style you still need to colour the lips and or any other part that stands out in colour though looking at the info it als does colour renders too so you could do one colour one black and white then open up in your paint/photo editing programe I assume you have one then have the colour render under the b/w one and erase say the lips so the colour ones show up then merge them
it is at full price at moment but been out for awhile so good chance be in some sale sooner or later
https://www.daz3d.com/monochrome-iray
I believe Will Timmins just released a toon shader that will do black and white not that long ago
Thanks. It looks like the greyscale suggestion is the best solution. I'm going to continue to play around with it. I looked at the mono chrome. I could see anywhere that I could keep certain colors like red lips or blue eyes. Thanks to everyone for the help!
Another idea would be to create a monochrome all your textures
the benefit being you could leave colored what you want colored and, you would only have to do it once, no matter how many times the item/s are used.
That was what I was thinking. Thanks
I saw a sin city filter in filter forge, not used it though.
I probably would use ink collection. There are a number of. Ice blac and white filters there that are free to use,
Tonal Range does some greying and color extreme effects. https://www.daz3d.com/tonal-rage-tone-mapping-toolkit-for-iray
Also check out the Manga-style Shaders. https://www.daz3d.com/manga-style-shaders if you want the look of the comic.
They want 99 dollars for that software, which I dont mind paying as long as its user friendly. Was it actually called Sin City? I was they had some samples.
It is actually called Sin City. Filter Forge does have a website where you can see some before and after examples of all filters here.
If you want to see how any of them would look on one of your renders I have Filter Forge and would be happy to run a few for you.
Iray Lens FX has a preset that will greyscale it for you.
This is nice, but not a Sin City effect. I created these 2 images, but I had to grey scale them and then add the colors using post work. I was wondering if there was a way to get this effect without the post work. Grey scaling the maps is possible, but not sure about the skin colors as they look very greyish. I suspect that even after I did all of this, it may not look the way I want it to look anyway. So post work it is.
Thanks to everyone though!
@nubianbdsmart new product released today mybe what your after https://www.daz3d.com/vyk-black-and-white-textures-for-genesis-8-females
That is seriously the Sin City Shader System right there, LOL. But its only for the females, strange. But you can apply these techniques to other things.
I have an idea. How about using the b&w bump maps for items in the color sections of the surface settings???
It may take a few minutes to set up, but you if they work you can save them as a preset for future use. Then oversaturate the color surfaces you want to keep. You can also create your own b&w textures from existing texture maps if the bumps are too dark and use them.
I use a program (also the Photoshop plugin) called Tintii. There is a free demo available from the site that you could try. I haven't tried it myself, but perhaps you could create an action to use the Tintii plugin and then batch process a folder of images. Link below for more info:
https://www.indii.org/software/tintii/download/
EDIT: Bit more info here: https://www.indii.org/software/tintii/index.html