Non-photorealistic Renders (NPR)

Artini

Simple forklift rendered in VectorStyle 2 for Carrara

mmitchell_houston

Artini said:

Simple forklift rendered in VectorStyle 2 for Carrara

Renders like this one made me bite the bullet and buy the Vector Style 2 plug-in. I think it ran me about $25. Next up, trying to get results with it.

Headwax

Y!

Artini

mmitchell_houston said:

...Renders like this one made me bite the bullet and buy the Vector Style 2 plug-in. I think it ran me about $25. Next up, trying to get results with it.

Great, please post some renders made with it. I am still a beginner in Carrara, so will be interesting to see renders made by others.

 

 

Artini

VectorStyle 2 for Carrara render of Big Bill Truck

https://www.daz3d.com/big-bill-truck

Oso3D

One of my struggles is to dial in a process that is reasonably fast and cool looking, and those goals fight one another a lot. ;)

I hope to go back to my web comic some day, and the challenge is that I want something more stylized and cool looking without spending 5 hours on a single flippin panel.

I really like the Graphic Novel filter in FilterForge, but I find the outlining often looks a bit meh.

So in this case, I have the Crayon Master v2 output, the Graphic Novel output (edges set to 0, basically flattening/simplifying the colors), and then Multiply.

Imagining it for a webcomic... what do you think?

 

Headwax

beautiful work @Artini !

@timmins.william I really like the image - for a webcomic I'd like the image a little flatter - less shadows more ambient ?? I guess that's taste and related to what you want - at the moment it looks likie a photograph run through some filters 

 

Oso3D

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. :)

Should probably stick to 3DL for such images; it's a lot easier to control that kind of thing.

 

Headwax

Sorry about that. 

 

Artini

Thanks, head wax. You are getting interesting images, by combining render passes from Carrara.

There are a lot of them to choose from during rendering, but I have noticed, that many of the render passes are just plain black or white.

Probably it is something related to the kind of lights used in the scene, but I still do not know

which type of the light affect particular render pass.

 

Headwax

Thanks Artini, oh the best thing to do is sit and try one at a time and then try and figure out what is happening.

Eg perhaps if there is no ambient occlusion set in  the renbder room then an ambient occlusion gives a black pass?

Apart from turning into a minor battle (?0 maybe the offending posts were removed? ) this thread is interesting https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/54406/compositing-and-post-work-what-is-it-and-why-should-i-care/p1

 

 

Headwax

Sorry double post. 

3Diva

algovincian said:

Kaleb242 said:

The latest advances in Deep Learning being applied to art are super exciting too.
Being able to input a source image, then input a style, and output a derivative artwork is nothing short of amazing...

https://deepart.io/

Here's a recent render done in a couple of the styles from deepart - it is rather astonishing:

Those are so cool! Wonderful art styles! I've tried signing up at that deepart.io website but I keep getting this error message:

Forbidden (403)

CSRF verification failed. Request aborted.

You are seeing this message because this HTTPS site requires a 'Referer header' to be sent by your Web browser, but none was sent. This header is required for security reasons, to ensure that your browser is not being hijacked by third parties.

If you have configured your browser to disable 'Referer' headers, please re-enable them, at least for this site, or for HTTPS connections, or for 'same-origin' requests.

More information is available with DEBUG=True.

 

Did you have the same issue? Do you know how to fix it? I've never seen an error like this on any other site that I've signed up on. It won't even let me sign up, keeps kicking me to that error page.

 

algovincian

I didn't have any issues in Chrome on Windows 7. What browser are you running? The error message is actually being specific for once - I can try and dig up some info for you once I know what browser you're currently running.

BTW, I played with it further after the 2 quick tests I posted here, trying a few different photos/renders as well as uploading my own styles. The results were hit and miss at best. A general solution is something that I've worked hard (for a long time) to address in my own NPR work.

For those that may be interested, the team at deepart reference the CNN (Convolutional Neural Network) that they based their own work on. There is a wealth of info out there about this specific network and the approach in general - if you're willing to put in the time. This includes formal papers, layer configurations, data sets (node weights), etc.

- Greg 

firewarden

For those who are interested, Topaz has everything 40% off right now with the code SPRING40. Their Black Friday deal is 50%, so this is pretty close. If you buy the whole bundle, it's 50% off buying the filters separately, then 40% off of that. Hope this is okay to post, since multiple folks have mentioned Topaz, I think.

Oso3D

This is an Iray image, but extensively filtered.

The premise is a D&D 5e splatbook (that exists only in my head).

Warlocks generally have some mysterious patron that's often demanding and weird, like Cthulhu (essentially), Fey, or Fiend. I thought... you know, having a Celestial (angel) as a patron would also be pretty terrifying. Warlocks are charismatic casters, with more limited spells than a wizard but a lot of special tricks.

So here's a Warlock with Celestial patron.

 

dreamfarmer

Just as an FYI, Topaz Labs is having a (not very common) sale of 40% off everything: http://www.topazlabs.com?hr=Wdwdm

Clean does great cartoony filters and there's several other (Simplify, Impressions, Glow) that do nice NPR stuff. I think the sale puts Clean at less than $20. The above is a referral link that gives you $20 of credit on a purchase. Not quite sure how those stack but might be worth checking out.

philebus

Just for my own amusement, I've been playing with the idea of doing a pack of playing cards (for tarot games - definately not for reading or what not). I'm using the same techinque that I've employed for my pulp book covers and have prepared a few rough designs to get a feel for the project. Essentially, I'm doing some simple corrections on the renders before taking them into ArtRage and attacking them with the palette knife. There's a little painting as well, but not much.

 

algovincian

philebus said:

Just for my own amusement, I've been playing with the idea of doing a pack of playing cards (for tarot games - definately not for reading or what not). I'm using the same techinque that I've employed for my pulp book covers and have prepared a few rough designs to get a feel for the project. Essentially, I'm doing some simple corrections on the renders before taking them into ArtRage and attacking them with the palette knife. There's a little painting as well, but not much.

Very cool, philebus! Have you actually printed any out yet?

- Greg

SiennaBlue

Hi everyone,

I absolutely love this thread!  I'm a lurker and don't actually have any art to share, but I've been wanting to tell you all how much I enjoy looking at your art.  I'm taking the opportunity now because I also would like to thank firewarden and dreamfarmer for sharing the info on the Topaz offers.  I was able to use both to get the Clarity and Clean filters for $27.99.  That's very exciting to me.  I tried to share a special deal yesterday for a Corel Paint 2017 bundle at bitsdujour, but the moderators deleted it because it was an "Off Site Commercial Thread".  Hopefully this will be ok since I'm not posting the link here.  I hope I don't get in trouble for this post, but I emailed them back and asked if there was any way I could share it with folks here.  I never received a reply, though.  The special price is $249 for Painter and several other goodies.

Edit: It's good for 7 more days.

Headwax

philebus said:

Just for my own amusement, I've been playing with the idea of doing a pack of playing cards (for tarot games - definately not for reading or what not). I'm using the same techinque that I've employed for my pulp book covers and have prepared a few rough designs to get a feel for the project. Essentially, I'm doing some simple corrections on the renders before taking them into ArtRage and attacking them with the palette knife. There's a little painting as well, but not much.

 

nice work, especially the Dr one . Be interested in the results after artrage. I've had artrage5 for a while but havnt had a chance to use it.....

 

Headwax

firewarden said:

For those who are interested, Topaz has everything 40% off right now with the code SPRING40. Their Black Friday deal is 50%, so this is pretty close. If you buy the whole bundle, it's 50% off buying the filters separately, then 40% off of that. Hope this is okay to post, since multiple folks have mentioned Topaz, I think.

thanks Firewarden and DReam farmer and SiennaBlue

 

dreamfarmer

I love the cards. I've toyed with doing something like that as well but got totally hung up on the framing part.

Also, I feel like a dork; I looked through the thread before posting but mostly at pictures, and totally missed Firewarden's mention of the same offer. :p

SiennaBlue

thanks Firewarden and DReam farmer and SiennaBlue

You're welcome, head wax.  :)

 

Also, I feel like a dork; I looked through the thread before posting but mostly at pictures, and totally missed Firewarden's mention of the same offer. :p

Please don't feel like a dork.  lol  I'm glad you both posted.  I was able to get the $20 credit from your link and then I used firewarden's coupon code for another 40% off.  

DaremoK3

Those are beautiful cards, philebus.

 

Here is a play with Artini's posted hammer and monkey files.  Thank you, Artini.  You helped me decide that I want to get that plug-in for Carrara.

 

 

Artini

That looks nice, DaremoK3, and you are welcome. I have to try that for myself, painting over VectorStyle 2 renderings.

 

Shemei

Thanks for the links to Topaz Clean.  I was able to use both the $20.00 credit and the coupon code and got Topaz Clean for free plus still have a couple bucks store credit.

philebus

algovincian said:

philebus said:

 

Very cool, philebus! Have you actually printed any out yet?

- Greg

Nothing printed yet. I'm still sketching out how I want them to look. I'm not even certain that I'm even going to have indices - I know they are something that we are used to on playing cards but they aren't always used on European packs and I've played without them just fine. There's a print on demand service called Make Playing Cards that do tarot packs and I'll be working to their template. Once complete, I can upload a complete pack to them for anyone to order at a not-for-profit price (ie, folk would just be paying MPC and the postage). It's part of a broader project that has had me rewriting my previous accounts of the rules to these games to standardize and Anglicize the terms and conventions.

My thinking for this pack though, is to create something modular, so that additional trumps (such as those for Minchiate) can be created and made available separately, along with alternative designs for suits and even supplimental cards for new games (such as those found in the Tarot of Loka).

I'm keen to try and keep most elements of the traditional designs but also to remove religious figures and avoid their newer occult counterparts.

Artrage is definately worth the investment for anyone wanting to get painted effects - there's a free trial and I believe that you can do what I'm doing with the cheaper version. Anyway, it's a simple enough method. I render the figures against a transparency, do a few corrections for colour, along with shadows and highlights - the cutout filture can also help by blocking out the colours -  and then open them as a tracing image in ArtRage. Create a new layer, then turn the tracing image into paint, so that it occupies the new layer. The trace image can then be turned off. Next, select the empty bottom layer and paint a background, smooting it if you want using a palette knife. Then merge the layers and attack the figure with the palatte knife.

I've been looking again at the Topaz Plugins on sale. I really like the look of Impression but, even on sale, it's a bit steep for my pocket at the moment. However, i did have a go with the trial of simplify a couple of months ago and am very tempted by that at the price. There's a lot you can do with it, even just to prepare an image for further work in ArtRage. It looks like I have a couple of days to think about it (my email says the off runs until the 16th).

firewarden

dreamfarmer said:

Just as an FYI, Topaz Labs is having a (not very common) sale of 40% off everything: http://www.topazlabs.com?hr=Wdwdm

Clean does great cartoony filters and there's several other (Simplify, Impressions, Glow) that do nice NPR stuff. I think the sale puts Clean at less than $20. The above is a referral link that gives you $20 of credit on a purchase. Not quite sure how those stack but might be worth checking out.

@dreamfarmer

Way cool!!! Even though I have a Topaz account and own the bundle, I got the $20 store credit, so I'll have that to put toward the next filter they come up with. Cool! Thank you for the link. (Let me post this link so you can get the $20 on your account: since your link worked to add credit to my account.) Edited to delete link so it wouldn't be used by anyone else.

firewarden

philebus said:

Just for my own amusement, I've been playing with the idea of doing a pack of playing cards (for tarot games - definately not for reading or what not). I'm using the same techinque that I've employed for my pulp book covers and have prepared a few rough designs to get a feel for the project. Essentially, I'm doing some simple corrections on the renders before taking them into ArtRage and attacking them with the palette knife. There's a little painting as well, but not much.

 ​ ​ ​

 

Those are simply gorgeous and look hand-painted. Wow! Just brilliant.