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juvesatriani,
I agree with you that the value we take away from this NPR thread is the enthusiasm we have for exploring different techniques. Nobody comes into the world fully formed in their vision or their skill. In a hobby with a public-facing component, part of the self-development comes from learning from one another through feedback. On that matter, let me repeat what I wrote recently to MagesMoon:
"... It's hard enough that the journey is fraught with twists and turns. It's harder to hear feedback that's dogmatic and discouraging. I've had my share of kibitzers who naysay; who dish out dos an don'ts that, on deeper examination, aren't well thought out, or aren't supported by practical experience. Sadly, when we share our experiments in a public space, we open ourselves up to criticism, unfair ones included. Having a thick skin helps a lot to ward off the arrows and the barbs. In the end though, the proof is in the pudding. Part of the satisfaction at accomplishing one's goal comes from proving the critics wrong."
Right. So to put things candidly: I think your NPR work is outstanding. It certainly inspired me early on to try different things. I'm also honored to be part of this thread where we largely let our work speak for itself. There's a good signal-to-noise ratio here. I think the openness and the encouragement will draw people to participate and explore their interests. Hopefully we all do our part to keep it that way.
Cheers!
@juvesatriani , @csaa
Well said both. I'm only just dipping my toes in the water with NPR rendering after following this thread (and learning from it) and its predecessors silently for a long time. I'm sharing my images for critique from more experienced NPR artists more than anything.
Everyone has their own styles, preferences and techniques. Octane just works for me (albeit in a roundabout way) to achieve the style I wanted, but it's in no way the "secret sauce". In fact it would fall short in reaching some of the looks that other methods can throughout this thread.
That being said, as I've adapted techniques others have shared and made them work for Octane, I hope there's a few useful nuggets in my explanation that others find helpful for their workflows. All in all I continue to look forward to seeing the fantastic renders this thread produces and contributing where I can.
@Phloki3D Thank you so much for the info and the screen grabs!
I gave it a go and realized I have a LOT to learn about Octane! lol After a lot of struggle to try and figure things out, I was able to get this look:
I'm still not sure how to get the textures to show up. Octane is definitely a "different type of beast" and something that I find difficult to navigate and understand. My hats off to you for being able to wrangle it to make your lovely images.
I thought maybe I could use Octane to make the nice lines and then layer that with some of my Iray shaders, but I can't seem to get the Iray render and the Octane render to be the exact same. Even setting the dimensions the same, the focal length and stuff seams to be different between the two so the Iray render and the Octane render doesn't line up when I try and layer them in Photoshop.
After struggling with it for a couple hours I threw in the towel. lol I'll have to stick to Iray for now.
On the plus side, I've been able to get some interesting results by layering some renders done with different Sketchy presets I made:
YESSSSS! That is fantastic! Bravo!
Oh that looks cool!
Thank you so much! These are very cool!
Here's a before and after with the "Cartoonize 2" setting. The haloing with the Unsharp Mask effects was a bit too strong for this particular render so I lowered the Unsharp Mask strength to 30%.
The effect is subtle with the Unsharp Mask lowered but I think it looks good. Thank you so much for sharing your action with us!
@3Diva a great start though! Typically I run into the issue of having everything whited-out if the specular and roughness values are too high. For the clothing below for example, these are the settings I've used so that the texture shows through but the shader is still generating some highlight. When laying it on top of a texture, think of the Specular value as the opacity of the highlight, and the roughness for the area that it's going to cover.
So the Specular value is quite low to allow the texture below through. Of course, the Diffuse should be set to RGB Image and the texture map plugged in if you're not just wanting to use a solid colour too.
Your Iray + Sketchy images look great though anyway!
Thank you! I'll have to do some more experimenting with it when I can be a bit more patient with it.
I love the ISSUES render BTW! I could totally see your above "demon hunter" sequential art and that issues one as a part of a webcomic. That style would lend itself well to that type of storytelling.
@3Diva thank you, I'm glad you've enjoyed the images!
At the moment I'm building a loose story, or at least a world and a set of characters, which I've named Katana Salad. I doubt I have the prowess yet to form a full web comic but at the very least some short scenes and one-offs in order to practice my workflow and further tweak the look - I may start a separate thread to showcase the experiments as to not clutter this one though.
For now here's a new example with the main characters (who are all named after various foods or condiments), I've tweaked the morphs more than anything to get them closer to the look of some of my favourite anime. The shader is one thing but getting the morphs to play nicely is another struggle in itself. I've found that using the geometry editor to create a new surface around their noses was a good way to control the outline thickness for that area separate from the entire face though.
The only postwork is my usual colour grading + grain + chromatic aberration
Phloki3D,
Looking good! For comic work you're intending to share, I recommend the 3D Comic Book Tips and Pictures. It seems to be the only thread in the Daz forum that's still going strong. The people who post and who lurk there are more interested in comic-creation concerns, such as software tools, graphic design, frame layout, dialog, pacing and so on; also, high brow and low brow issues regarding good storytelling. A number of people there have their own web comic series. "Katana Salad" sounds catchy. Fair chance that it'll pique their interest in that thread.
In contrast, this NPR thread revolves around image creation -- the "look", especially sample renders and discussions about techniques.
As always, hope to see more of your work.
Cheers!
3Diva,
I've been meaning to commend you for the interesting images you've made with Sketchy+Photoshop. Did you use the same technique for your "Humane Harvest" web comic?
Cheers!
Oh no, it's a bit different. I've modified my technique a bit since then. It's not so different that it will look really "off" compared to the first two episodes, but I think the future episodes will have the new technique which, I hope looks a little better.
Thank you for the comment! :) That's very nice of you!
Here's a bit more on one of the styles that I enjoy. It's done with two different Sketchy renders and layered in Photoshop:
And here's the layered image with some light postwork:
This one of Hitomi is done in the same style:
I LOVE it! I am so glad it works for you. I definitely recommend playing with those settings since canvas size can dramatically affect the effect.
Great result @3Diva and props to @LoreMistressIzaria for the actions. I like that it gives a great cartoon look whilst still maintaining sharp details!
I've been trying out something new to solve the issue of Octane's toon shader not casting shadows - at least for the ground plane. I've created a shadow catcher of sorts and given it a hatch line opacity map to blend better with the rest of the scene. That way I can let Octane calculate the shadows but still have a hand-drawn look - previously the shadows were too soft and realistic for my tastes as the ground plane has to technically be a non-toon shaded material in order to catch the shadows of other objects in the scene.
Long story short, they're more of a stylized ambient occlusion than a true ray traced shadow but I like the look so far and it saves a bunch of effort down the line.
I think the linework and the coloring on this is spot on perfect.
That's a great solution - the shadows look good and add to the lovely stylized look. Nicely done!
Thank you so much, @FirstBastion ! That style is a bit trickier to get to work. The shader that gives the purple lighting, in particular, is super finicky and very dependent upon the lighting as well as the version of Daz Studio it's rendered in. I tried to recreate the effect here, but as you can see, it's quite a bit different:
Sadly, since it's so hard to reproduce accurately it's not very viable for a consistent workflow, unfortunately.
Thought I'd try a full scene. I might do the next shot in this style also just so I can see how the toony flame look I posted above looks in context.
Sgt. Inez | Daz assets and set up | Blender Eevee render | Clip Studio Paint post-edit
Put a little bit more work into this scene, especially into tooning up the background more. There are still some things I can't figure out, like why his hands aren't outlined, or why it stops drawing the ground textures past a certain distance from the camera.
@Gordig the outline does need some tweaking in certain areas, I haven't tested it yet but it might be worth creating a new surface for the hands and increasing the outline thickness there. As for the ground texture, I've found that flat planes tend to have weird outlines by default too, try decreasing the outline thickness considerably to see if it helps - This is where the texture itself needs to give the toon look rather than the shader.
The glossiness on his skin is because I was playing around with specularity in a probably misguided attempt to add some detail to his face, since it was pretty indistinct and washed out. Phloki, I'll try some different surface settings for different parts of his body, because right now it's a single material for all of his skin.
This early draft I did for my friend project . I cant post the final iteration in here ( which much much more better btw , since he`s also great photoshop user) , but both images using same kind technique and workflow
Since he`d only gave me around 6 hour to deliver , I decide to experiment wih preview render . And yes there is no Toon Shader used in here . Most of element generated via smooth shaded/toon shaded preview , with bunch of fake point lights to give some colors in scene .
Then like always, Bring in photoshop to push the stylized using filters and did some color adjustment
I think I've got most of the kinks worked out.
Sgt. Inez: The Unmet Longing | Daz Studio assets and set up | Blender Eevee render | Clip Studio Paint post-edit
Another day, another of Octane's quirks discovered. I was playing around with controling the toon shadows and specular highlights via normal maps and found out that if I just set the material to have a normal map node without any map in it, Octane does a fair job of adding shadows in itself. A comparison is below with and without this setting:
I'm not sure yet if it's the look I'm going to pursue, or continue with more of a flat appearance, but it was interesting nonetheless.