Non-photorealistic Renders (NPR)

Knittingmommy

tkdrobert said:

This is my 1st attempt at using Cresent's 3Delight technique.  I used Visual Style Shaders to see how it would look.  I'll try her shaders too.  What do you all think?

I like the dual tone of the outlines and you got some really nice definition there.  Looks good.

 

tkdrobert

Not a great attempt at doing Batman.  I find it very hard to do Justice to Batman in Daz or Poser.  I can't really find a good Bat cape that does what is required.  I have 3 Batman Masks, but all of the seem a bit off.  None of them do the eyes well either.  A pity because I love the Batman character.

tkdrobert

Captain Marvel.  Much happier with how this turned out.  Although, next time I'll use a different head morph so all my female superheros won't look the same.  I again used the 3Delight technique that Crimson taught me, but this time I only used 2 out of the 3 outlines that it produced.  Since the color render had such good shading, I left out the black shading completly.  I still had to touch up the line work a bit, but this technigue saves me a lot of time.  Thank you Crimison for teaching me this.  I didn't use Visual Style Shaders on this one.

Artini

mmitchell_houston said:

Artini said:

...

I like it. Nice scene, interesting colors. But for me, this is one area where most of the "toon-style" renders fall apart: They do a good job of aplying lines to places where the different materials intersect, but usually fall short when it comes to like-on-like (in this case, under his armpit where we have skin-on-skin). Nevertheless, you've done more with Unity than I ever imagined possible. I'm very intrigued by the possibilities of adding physics to image creation (well, at least doing it more easily than you can in Poser and Daz Studio).

Thanks. I have realized, that besides post effects or postwork, one need to apply also some toon or the other NPR shaders to everything in the scene.

I have not tried apply the toon shaders to the characters, but only to the environment. Guess, I need to try to do that next.

 

kenmo

Crescent said:

Nope, it's my own, home made shaders and the 3Delight Scripted Outline render that comes with DS.  I do a pass with the Scripted Outline then 2 passes with my shaders using regular 3Delight.  (I use DraagonStorm's Mask and Multipass Toolbox to do the 2 render passes at once but it's easy to do it manually if you don't have it.)  After that, I take the results into PS, combine them into one document with layers, run Cutout on one layer, and set the layer styles and opacity as desired.  If anyone is interested, I can put up the link to my shaders and do a full tutorial on it.

 

tkdrobert said:

Captain Marvel.  Much happier with how this turned out.  Although, next time I'll use a different head morph so all my female superheros won't look the same.  I again used the 3Delight technique that Crimson taught me, but this time I only used 2 out of the 3 outlines that it produced.  Since the color render had such good shading, I left out the black shading completly.  I still had to touch up the line work a bit, but this technigue saves me a lot of time.  Thank you Crimison for teaching me this.  I didn't use Visual Style Shaders on this one.

Hey... I completely forgot Marvel had a female Captain Marvel. I always think of Jim Starlin's version of Captain Marvel...

Love the style & look of this image... 

kenmo

Crescent said:

To get to the Render Outlines:

• In the Render Settings tab, select Scripted 3Delight.
• Set the Render Script to Outline.

The Outline render system is twitchy.  It may seem like it finishes quickly since it saves to disk, but it isn't finished until it pops up a render in a new window as well.  You don't need to save this render, but you do need to wait until it's ready before doing anything else.

If you re-render the outlines later, the system may ask if it should overwrite the render files or it may decide to sit there and do nothing.  Always immediately re-name the outline files after a render to be on the safe side. 

The outline files will be in whatever folder you indicated as follows:

• (prefix)_Frm0_ColorID.tif
• (prefix)_Frm0_Depth.tif
• (prefix)_Frm0_Normal.tif

I uploaded my shaders plus a big tutorial on how to do all of this here:  outpostecho.com/downloads/Crescent-ToonShaders.zip  (One of these days I'll recreate my site.)

Awesome...so wickedly kind of you... Much appreciated....

tkdrobert

kenmo said:

Crescent said:

Nope, it's my own, home made shaders and the 3Delight Scripted Outline render that comes with DS.  I do a pass with the Scripted Outline then 2 passes with my shaders using regular 3Delight.  (I use DraagonStorm's Mask and Multipass Toolbox to do the 2 render passes at once but it's easy to do it manually if you don't have it.)  After that, I take the results into PS, combine them into one document with layers, run Cutout on one layer, and set the layer styles and opacity as desired.  If anyone is interested, I can put up the link to my shaders and do a full tutorial on it.

 

tkdrobert said:

Captain Marvel.  Much happier with how this turned out.  Although, next time I'll use a different head morph so all my female superheros won't look the same.  I again used the 3Delight technique that Crimson taught me, but this time I only used 2 out of the 3 outlines that it produced.  Since the color render had such good shading, I left out the black shading completly.  I still had to touch up the line work a bit, but this technigue saves me a lot of time.  Thank you Crimison for teaching me this.  I didn't use Visual Style Shaders on this one.

Hey... I completely forgot Marvel had a female Captain Marvel. I always think of Jim Starlin's version of Captain Marvel...

Love the style & look of this image... 

I have a free trial for Kindle Unlimited and I was able to read a Captain Marvel graphic novel from about 2 years ago.  I liked it.  The funny thing is, if Carol Danvers was a real woman, I'd fall in love with her easy.  She is an Air Force pilot, a huge Star Wars fan, and can kick ass.        Not a big fan of blonde hair though.  No offence to any blonds.    Anyway, she's getting her own movie next year I think.  I think she might be in Infinety War this May as well, but don't quote me on that.

Oso3D

I had a breakthrough with using Iray to generate useful stuff for art renders. That's the tease... more on that later.

Here's an early test result.

Total render time was 2-3 minutes (although many hours of tinkering to try stuff)

 

tkdrobert

It’s not nice to tease. 

Oso3D

Debating which style I like better.

Leaning toward the stippled/second one...

 

Knittingmommy

@Oso3D I like the second one better. The other one is just a bit too much on your main figure in the front. It seems to work better on the cop in that back in the first one

(I just realized you changed your username, Will.)

Oso3D

Heh, yeah. BRANDING!

(jazz hands)

 

mmitchell_houston

Oso3D said:

Debating which style I like better.

Leaning toward the stippled/second one...

I think they both have a LOT going for them. Each has a little something different to offer.

The "stippling" one more closely mimics the traditional halftone effects in older comics, and that definitely suits this figure. But the second one (above) has more detail and the shadows look better (at least to my eye). Either one could be a winner. If you're planning to do a story with these figures, I suggest trying a darker scene with more shadows to see how the effects hold up. Just a thought (of course, I do so many noir illustrations, when I look at a comic, I think everything looks like it should be bathed in shadows).

mmitchell_houston

Oso3D said:

I had a breakthrough with using Iray to generate useful stuff for art renders. That's the tease... more on that later.

Here's an early test result.

Total render time was 2-3 minutes (although many hours of tinkering to try stuff)

The tease succeeds! That's Iray? Wow. Never would have guessed. Any processing on this?

mmitchell_houston

tkdrobert said:

Captain Marvel.  Much happier with how this turned out.  Although, next time I'll use a different head morph so all my female superheros won't look the same.  I again used the 3Delight technique that Crimson taught me, but this time I only used 2 out of the 3 outlines that it produced.  Since the color render had such good shading, I left out the black shading completly.  I still had to touch up the line work a bit, but this technigue saves me a lot of time.  Thank you Crimison for teaching me this.  I didn't use Visual Style Shaders on this one.

Congratulations! This is definitely a step in the direction we discussed. My one suggestion would be to lighten the colors on the costume: the blues make it hard to see the linework. Other than that, though, this is pretty darned good.

mmitchell_houston

tkdrobert said:

Not a great attempt at doing Batman.  I find it very hard to do Justice to Batman in Daz or Poser.  I can't really find a good Bat cape that does what is required.  I have 3 Batman Masks, but all of the seem a bit off.  None of them do the eyes well either.  A pity because I love the Batman character.

Pretty good job, but I know what you mean. It's hard to do The Dark Knight justice. And, as I said, don't get me ranting about capes... we'll be up all night!

mmitchell_houston

IceDragonArt said:

mmitchell_houston said:

IceDragonArt said:

I don't do a lot of NPR but here is one I did just recently. 

I'm really smitten by the highcontrast texture approach you used. All those little red squares almost floating in space... it's a very nice effect. I also like the body type you chose forher. This has a nice, sketched look to it.

Thank you!  I really enjoyed putting this together, and may explore this a bit further with some other things. I always enjoy the art I see in this thread, you guys must have rubbed off on me just a little!

You're welcome! And I hope we do inspire people. Whenever I come here, that's how I feel. This group has really evoloved into a very collaborative place, where we are teaching/learning/sharing together. My work is definitely better from having spent time here.

tkdrobert

Oso3D said:

Debating which style I like better.

Leaning toward the stippled/second one...

 

Yeah I like the 2nd and I will always know you as Wil.  LOL

tkdrobert

mmitchell_houston said:

tkdrobert said:

Captain Marvel.  Much happier with how this turned out.  Although, next time I'll use a different head morph so all my female superheros won't look the same.  I again used the 3Delight technique that Crimson taught me, but this time I only used 2 out of the 3 outlines that it produced.  Since the color render had such good shading, I left out the black shading completly.  I still had to touch up the line work a bit, but this technigue saves me a lot of time.  Thank you Crimison for teaching me this.  I didn't use Visual Style Shaders on this one.

Congratulations! This is definitely a step in the direction we discussed. My one suggestion would be to lighten the colors on the costume: the blues make it hard to see the linework. Other than that, though, this is pretty darned good.

I tried several things in post work to lighten the blue, but it just messed up the face.  There wasn’t enough light in the Daz scene.  Next time I do this character, I’ll use more lights (bit not too much).

tkdrobert

mmitchell_houston said:

tkdrobert said:

Not a great attempt at doing Batman.  I find it very hard to do Justice to Batman in Daz or Poser.  I can't really find a good Bat cape that does what is required.  I have 3 Batman Masks, but all of the seem a bit off.  None of them do the eyes well either.  A pity because I love the Batman character.

Pretty good job, but I know what you mean. It's hard to do The Dark Knight justice. And, as I said, don't get me ranting about capes... we'll be up all night!

I can do a decent scene of him just standing or even crouching but not action.  I’m thinking of doing a Noir style render of him scaring a bad guy through a doorway.

wsterdan

tkdrobert said:

mmitchell_houston said:

tkdrobert said:

Not a great attempt at doing Batman.  I find it very hard to do Justice to Batman in Daz or Poser.  I can't really find a good Bat cape that does what is required.  I have 3 Batman Masks, but all of the seem a bit off.  None of them do the eyes well either.  A pity because I love the Batman character.

Pretty good job, but I know what you mean. It's hard to do The Dark Knight justice. And, as I said, don't get me ranting about capes... we'll be up all night!

I can do a decent scene of him just standing or even crouching but not action.  I’m thinking of doing a Noir style render of him scaring a bad guy through a doorway.

If you want to work on this particular action, I'd probably zoom out a bit and maybe change the angle a little -- at first glance, there's not enough difference between Bats and the background, and as a result it's not immediately obvious (at least to me) what's going on here. It might be worthwhile as well to break up the window textures a bit (just a little to show that they're windows, not so much as to cause distraction). My initial impression was that it was some kind of photo spread for a woman's magazine.

As well, I'd probaby make his skin tones a little richer, on my monitor (which might be the problem) he looks like a goth boy with black lipstick.

On the plus side, I absolutely love the moon, clouds and bats. I think it's worth tinkering with a little, rather than abandoning.

-- Walt Sterdan

Oso3D

The breakthrough was figuring out an easy to use way to do a lightless flat color pass. I won’t explain that more... yet. 

So there’s a flat color render, then a normal lighting pass with everything made white. The lit image was sucked into FilterForge to do one of various art filters, then layered in Photoshop.

I’m going to try to do some form of Normal outlining to make a ‘complete’ thing, for people who don’t want to mess too much with outside stuff.

 

Crescent

Oso3D said:

The breakthrough was figuring out an easy to use way to do a lightless flat color pass. I won’t explain that more... yet. 

So there’s a flat color render, then a normal lighting pass with everything made white.

 

That's what I do but I use 3Delight instead of iRay.  It'll be interesting to hear how you do it in iRay and see if there's an improvement in render time vs 3Delight.

Oso3D

I'll probably be making this as a product, so I can't divulge too much.

But render time for a pass is like 30-60 seconds. (Maybe ... a few minutes in CPU mode? I'll have to test that)

 

 

tkdrobert

Crescent said:

Oso3D said:

The breakthrough was figuring out an easy to use way to do a lightless flat color pass. I won’t explain that more... yet. 

So there’s a flat color render, then a normal lighting pass with everything made white.

 

That's what I do but I use 3Delight instead of iRay.  It'll be interesting to hear how you do it in iRay and see if there's an improvement in render time vs 3Delight.

My 3Delight renders are faster that IRAY.  I like the lighting in IRAY though.

tkdrobert

Oso3D said:

The breakthrough was figuring out an easy to use way to do a lightless flat color pass. I won’t explain that more... yet. 

So there’s a flat color render, then a normal lighting pass with everything made white. The lit image was sucked into FilterForge to do one of various art filters, then layered in Photoshop.

I’m going to try to do some form of Normal outlining to make a ‘complete’ thing, for people who don’t want to mess too much with outside stuff.

 

Very interested.

tkdrobert

wsterdan said:

tkdrobert said:

mmitchell_houston said:

tkdrobert said:

Not a great attempt at doing Batman.  I find it very hard to do Justice to Batman in Daz or Poser.  I can't really find a good Bat cape that does what is required.  I have 3 Batman Masks, but all of the seem a bit off.  None of them do the eyes well either.  A pity because I love the Batman character.

Pretty good job, but I know what you mean. It's hard to do The Dark Knight justice. And, as I said, don't get me ranting about capes... we'll be up all night!

I can do a decent scene of him just standing or even crouching but not action.  I’m thinking of doing a Noir style render of him scaring a bad guy through a doorway.

If you want to work on this particular action, I'd probably zoom out a bit and maybe change the angle a little -- at first glance, there's not enough difference between Bats and the background, and as a result it's not immediately obvious (at least to me) what's going on here. It might be worthwhile as well to break up the window textures a bit (just a little to show that they're windows, not so much as to cause distraction). My initial impression was that it was some kind of photo spread for a woman's magazine.

As well, I'd probaby make his skin tones a little richer, on my monitor (which might be the problem) he looks like a goth boy with black lipstick.

On the plus side, I absolutely love the moon, clouds and bats. I think it's worth tinkering with a little, rather than abandoning.

-- Walt Sterdan

I was trying to do a scene of Batman jumping down off a building.  I agree about his skin.  Unfortunately, I can’t find the scene.  I swear  I saved it in the usual place.  I think the solution to doing Batman is to dust off my drawing skills.  I’ve done this on a small scale, but not on a larger scale.  I seem to have a mental block when it comes to that.  I can’t seem to compute taking the lighting and shading of a Daz scene and duplicating it in an added drawing.  Does that are sense?  There is a tutorial out there that I think addresses this, but the audio is horrible.  The lazy part of me would like to do everything in DAZ, but I don’t think that is truly possible with everything I want to do.  I’m open to any suggestions/recommended tutorials.  BTW, I appreciate all of the help and constructive criticism I’ve received from the community.

wsterdan

Hopefully you can find the scene, 'cause most of the hard work is already done. 

Occasionally with action shots, part of the probem is pulling a single snap from the middle of the action. For example, if you had a pulled-back shot showing Bats at the top of the building with the moon behind him, then a second shot showing him leaping off the roof, then this panel, there's be no question what was going on. Action shots in the middle of the action, without speed or motion lines, sometimes lose a little clarity. 

-- Walt Sterdan

Saphirewild

Here is my very first attempt at NPR using the Nik Filters in my GIMP program. Rendered in 3Delight as well.

Crescent

Oso3D said:

I'll probably be making this as a product, so I can't divulge too much.

But render time for a pass is like 30-60 seconds. (Maybe ... a few minutes in CPU mode? I'll have to test that)

 

 

Not bad for iRay but a lot slower than 3Delight.