Carrara Non Photo Realistic Works
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Dart, terrific render! Which part was Carrara, and which part Howler?
A couple days ago I FINALLY started to look at Howler. I looked at your thread, and some tutorials. Very hard to grasp at first, but the whole is getting easier to understand. Just interested in the paint functions currently. I have yet to do any animations, so that will come later.
"Artist" is the Project Dogwaffle thaat omits the Animation menu, and is discounted for that ;)
Howler has some 3d rendering capabilities on a limited targeted level. The one used here is called 3D Designer, which uses whatever image is open as a height map that we can manipulate in many different ways. Of course there are a bazillion tools we can use to work with the image before doing so for different result, which is part of the magic.
While in 3D Designer, we can export the various maps of information used to create the three dimensional object we see in the designer, and we can also export an OBJ resulting from our settings.
This is a Carrara screenshot showing the mesh I've imported as an obj, exported from Howler's 3d designer.
It was created using a simple 256 x 256 grayscale image made by Tiffanie Gray. I used my Woodlands Forest Terrain shader as a starting point, and then added snow and changed the other distributions along the way - a lot more rock, for example. I actually spent hours just playing with that shader! I now realize that I need a lot more practice trying to get snow onto terrain.
After getting it shaded I duplicated it to add more terrain to the scene (Woodlands Base Scene Day, with terrian removed and lighting adjusted - no volumetric clouds, added two layers of clouds in the sky, changed the Artificial GI Light Replicator setting for minimum spacing (right replicator window) from 280' to 980', which reduces the number of lights from 88 to 11, and replaced the replicated Ocean shader with the included (Woodlands) Background Quality water shader.
The render came out like this, except I did a very slight (didn't really need much - turned out great) color adjustment in Howler as well as added the sun flare
I've been wanting to do something new with the whole NPR idea ever since this thread began. I was already awakeway too long, I just made a cup of coffee and opened Howler!
In Howler, I revisited the color adjustments. I love Howler's "Adust All" panel, which give RG and B for both foreground and background as well as gamma, saturation, value, contrast, brightness and hue. Playing in there is one of my favorite ways to post work a render without actually changing anthing but how it pops naturally. This time, however, I was thinking more along the line of a painter's pallette and oversaturated, got contrasty for a bit then went the opposite way... I played with the settings in that panel quite a lot before moving on.
Another thing I love to do after such a dramatic change is to use the interactive undo slider to see the changes in a linear add/remove method. Sometimes I keep all of the adjustments, sometime I feel that a touch of undo does the trick nicely. They say to always back away at least 10% because our eyes like to taunt us into going beyond what will look good to others. Sometimes I do as they say... other times, not so much.
I've never used the Paper feature prior to this. So I really wanted to give it a try, and was glad I did. Very intuitive system and, again, interactive undo ehlps too! I started with a paper that gave the impression that I've been working at this thing for a while, and was starting to ge a little beat up.
Then I went to Brush Strokes and really investigated the changes made with varying settings. That was really fun. After that I went back to Paper, then Adjust All to play with colors and contrast of the new image, then selected the hull of the ship and applied an inverse paper to that with a lot of interactive undo, brush stroke again - different settings this time, and I think some more Paper.
During that whole thing, I could have gotten a really cool look with an overpowering sun - but that's a camera lens thing, so I went the other way. It would be fun to blow away a good portion of the canvas with slightly hued white paint to create such a blowout. my my drifted to painting in an effect like that on a canvas. For this, however, I decided to go more for how I would have painted it without that idea. I looked for colors I might use, outlines I might paint in, strokes I might make. It was really fun.
All of these things... I ended up building up one subtle step at a time, trying never to lose image information along the way. Howler has this thing where we can store a copy of the image (or video if we're doing thhat) in a little unsaved window on the screen. I use that a lot - mainly as a backup before I do something major, but it's also nice to have for mixing into a later result if we want to. But now I think I'm getting ahead of myself.
Since we're on a new page, here it is again to compare with the above stuff
Okay, I think PD Artist (non animation version) also has 3D Designer and PuppyRay? Not sure. I could find out if you want.
But I forgot to mention that Dogwaffle (all of them) have really nice particle-based brushes. I love one called Light Wash, which is a Bristle Particle brush. There are a whole lot of really nice presets, and then we have the interface to alter those however we need to. The Foliage particle brushes are amazing - as is the particle-builder interface we can use to create our own ways to tell the particles what to do. I've messed around making my own for quite some time once... but then, like always, I run out of time.
It's been a long time (it feels like, anyway) since I've binged out on Phillip Staiger's Daily Dose of Waffling and Howling - the pdhowler YouTube tutorials and instructional sessions. I have spent hours and hours watching him use Dogwaffle in those videos. They might have a specific name, but the videos always explain a lot more than their title suggests. There was a time when I knew which video had what info in it so I could quickly find the subject I needed.
I still have the little Acer AspireOne 11" mini laptop I bought so that I could learn Howler on the go.
My first day with Holwer, I selected a very hard pencil preset and had my Wacom (that I never seem to use) hooked up and drew a picture of my daughter's face. She was finally pregnant after thinking that she may never be able to... she was glowing. I was amazed at how much that little Wacon actually felt like sketch book paper as I sketched in Howler. Switch to a globby oil brush, and it takes on the actual feel of a globby, sticky oil brush. I've never used one in other software of this kind... but I was immediately impressed.
I also got very addicted to Phillip's wonderful teaching and playing style and his wacky music in the background - just perfect. And now I feel one with Howler even though it has so much more to it than what I've explored. I also love the devotion of its creator and constant developer, Mr. Dan Ritchie. I don't think there's ever a day when he doesn't write something cool into Dogwaffle. And he's always happy to share his discoveries and enthusiasm toward art, motion, and art in motion.
Anyway, thanks. It was fun to make! ;)
yippee Dart! That's great, really wonderful to see you working like this - and thanks for the walktrhough too - I just bought the new Howler looking forward to playing.
Cool! You can teach me some new tricks! ;) There's a LOT to discover in any of the Dogwaffles (I have PD Artist (why? just to see), PD Particles (!!!) and Howler)!
Thanks Dart, that would be a case of apprentice teaching Master tho :)
Here's that image I did with Philemeno's hair plugin converted to meshes then those meshes used as replicator surface for leaves and flowers - now post worked in Topaz Impression
it's 2400 wide if you want it bigger :)
Wow. Softness really does something (wonderful) to expansive scenes of beauty, doesn't it? I love it!
That's one thing about Howler - being only 32 bit, larger resolutions can be difficult. But try running that original render into 3D Designer - probably at a reduced resolution (Image > Resample)
Oh, so I'm a Master now, am I?
In the case of making PR renders look painted, I think it would be more like you get to be the Master!!!
thanks Dart :)
ha ha typo fixed - now has a capital as well :)
But.... Oh okay!
What the heck? I used to be able to type like crazy without hitting any wrong letters... now I'm constantly finding myself screwing up... what's with that?
getting old! lol
I am? When?
Very nice of you to say, HW, thanks. I realize that old science fiction cover recreations like this only appeal to a narrow group of people.
Thanks Dart, for the detailed explanation of your render with Howler. I'm not ready for it yet, but at least your explanation gave me a better idea of the possible workflow with Carrara. Much appreciated!
I had to do a flying purple people eater!
dangerous things those people eaters (they get in the sutf too!( love the expression on the dog!!!)
... with a Puppy!!! :)
Very nice NPR effects, Sir!
here's the dungeon job with FilterForge's allabout the benjamins filter (tweaked a little)
https://www.filterforge.com/filters/12170.html
Very nice Dart - hope you do more NPR renders !!!!
Bueatiful render Headwax !!!
Lovely effect with this one
Thats too cute Stezza !!!!
Morpheus gone to the dogs
Purple alien
thank you Bunyip02!!
I was unfortunate last night to see this one just before dropping off - I'm sure it gavce me nightmares!! That's always a good sign of a good work :)
It's scary as.!
quickie with Fluidos plugin
A quickie? That is insane!! It looks like Fluidos is going to break even more boundaries in Carrara than expected.
Truly amazing work, HW.
Edit - it is so good, I don't even want to ask the details right now. It will spoil the magic.
Yeah... I'm stuck gazing at this thing as well. Love the gold... looks freaking fantastique!
ha ha thanks to you both
it's a plain jane Vicki with gold texture wacked on her plus a carrara sky and I dumped a bucket of water on her head :) - keep that to yourself!
camera at 1round 150 mill helps
love the reflection in her eyes and the armour plated eylashes - all accidental