Non-photorealistic Renders (NPR)
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Glad you like 'em, Mattymanx!
The custom shader that gets dynamically applied in DAZ is only analyzing the geometry, textures, lighting, etc. in the scene to then be passed along to the algorithms actually doing the illustrating. Pictures showing what information is encoded, along with a more detailed explanation, can be found here:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/795474/
The shader is not creating the illustrations in DAZ. I wish it were as simple as applying the shader in DAZ and pressing render, but I don't think it's possible to do everything inside of DAZ. It would require re-inventing about 100 wheels, and turning DAZ into something completely different than what it is.
I'm currently talking with Kevin @ DAZ about how to make this technology available to DAZ users, and am hopeful we can figure out a way to make it happen.
- Greg
When I first started 10 yrs a go I tried to do it all in one pass but soon realized there was no way to do that. I broke it down to Color and Ink. Then there was the problem with backgrounds they were a different scale to objects in the foreground so that had to a separate render again. So I'm think it will have to be a multi pass system, but if you have to combin them manually the you just make a Utube video tutorial. You are taking on a huge task for one man.
Excellent, Eustace! Thanks for contributing to the thread. Please keep us posted on your progress on the shader. If you've got any more examples, I'd love to see 'em!
Depth is one of my main focus areas, too. Illustrating object separation can be a real challenge. I've gone through great lengths to include depth cues other than DOF blur - good stuff!
- Greg
Once the analysis pass is rendered out in DAZ and sent to the illustrators, there is no manual processing involved - it's entirely automated. This allows for animation. I should have a morphing run cycle for people to check out some time next week.
- Greg
What I used was a mix-brick to blend near-distance and far-distance values, as set by the user, with CMYK in the front and a Sepia-blend in the back. Whatever range the user sets, it fades between the near- and far-distance parameters from one to the other. The dots, too, can be turned off. This is the same scene as before, with the distance fade near-point set beyond the end of the scene and the CMYK channels blended rather than halftoned.
amazing work and i love it
As y'all likely guessed, my renders were in the Skunkville Noir shader that launched this morning. If you haven't seen the store page today, look at this:
http://www.daz3d.com/skunkville-noir
Fantastic images here,love this styl !!!
that;s superb work, congrats.
that;s superb work, congrats.
Thanks head wax - Noodle is one of my favorite characters to work with. I was hoping people would post more renders with the little guy. Guess I'll have to do some more myself!
- Greg
Easily the best I've ever seen! It's ready to be inked, colored and lettered. I would be interested in your workflow!
I myself would purchase this shader and the scripts. The output is fantastic.
I hope this would be a stand alone shader as well. Not everyone uses DAZ for their renders. (Though I think almost everyone has some DAZ content in their runtime)
and a side note to nDelphi...excellent site! Your celebrity stars? Some of them are truly impressive. Let me know if you ever find an einstein. I always find it interesting that celebrities are wanted more than historical figures such as Lincoln or Shakespere. Some I understand. I mean who really knows Galileo looked like? But a John Kennedy or Martin Luthor King would be nice too. If only I had the skills. End of soap box.
By the way, Liz Taylor is spot on! She'll look nice beside a certain blonde bombshell.
Vue 2015 (just released) has a new NPR render mode. http://www.cornucopia3d.com/galleries/displayimage.php?album=3&pos=0&pid=67881 and the outputs are looking pretty sweet!
I like your concept… Keep up the good work my friend.
Glad you like 'em, Mattymanx!
The custom shader that gets dynamically applied in DAZ is only analyzing the geometry, textures, lighting, etc. in the scene to then be passed along to the algorithms actually doing the illustrating. Pictures showing what information is encoded, along with a more detailed explanation, can be found here:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/795474/
The shader is not creating the illustrations in DAZ. I wish it were as simple as applying the shader in DAZ and pressing render, but I don't think it's possible to do everything inside of DAZ. It would require re-inventing about 100 wheels, and turning DAZ into something completely different than what it is.
I'm currently talking with Kevin @ DAZ about how to make this technology available to DAZ users, and am hopeful we can figure out a way to make it happen.
- Greg
As far as the painting algorithm goes (http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewreply/804286/), the process is a little different. More channels are necessary, so the output from DAZ can no longer encode info in the RGB channels of a single image file. The multi-pass rendering outputs 7 different files (ambient, color, base, fresnel, ambient occlusion, highlights, and z-depth). The painting is then produced outside of DAZ based on the info contained in those 7 files.
In both cases, even though much of the work is done outside of DAZ, everything is completely scripted/automated. No human intervention is required. I maintain a distributed network to handle all of the HDR processing, fractal algorithms, sketching, painting, etc.
I've had an animation cooking of a morphing run cycle (644 frames), which will finish up in a couple days. At this point in development, I am saving *tons* of intermediate files during processing so that I can analyze them after the fact. This aids in editing the algorithms without having to re-do everything.
So far, there have been ~17,500 intermediate files (each a 16 million pixel .jpg) written for the animation, taking up ~80GB! No crashes so far - woot! I'm probably going to pay for saying that . . . everybody please cross your fingers & toes!
If anybody has any specific questions about the workflow, I'd be happy to answer them. I know it's complicated. I wish it were simpler . . .
- Greg
Just started putting a website together, which includes images showing 3D meshes -> paintings & line art:
http://www.algovincian.com
Here's a direct link to a video demonstrating the use of the line art NPR on a morphing run cycle:
http://algovincian.zenfolio.com/img/s6/v141/o954441735/c1/p1149723929-210.mp4
Attached are a few frames of Genesis going through some morphs while running. This really shows the power of the Genesis figure!
- Greg
That is a good proof of concept video.
Thanks, FirstBastion. I'm no animator, but the BVH import in DAZ was great for setting this up quickly.
I've received several direct messages asking me about how I set up the animation, so I'll go ahead and post some details about the tools and methods used in hopes that somebody else might find the information helpful.
I started with a motion capture from the Daz-friendly BVH release of CMU's motion capture database (this is an incredible resource!):
https://sites.google.com/a/cgspeed.com/cgspeed/motion-capture/daz-friendly-release
I then used bvhacker to easily load and browse all of the numerous mocaps:
http://www.bvhacker.com/
I also used bvhacker to visualize, mark in/out and crop a suitable range of frames for making a loopable run cycle.
BVH files are text files readable by humans that basically define joints, and then list joint rotations for a number of frames, so after exporting from bvhacker, I imported the file into an Open Office spreadsheet (free/open-source):
https://www.openoffice.org/
I resampled the mocap data by only keeping one out of every 4 rows in the spreadsheet. Having fewer keyframes makes the animation easier to work with, and DAZ will interpolate some tween frames later on. I then played with applying some moving averages to the motion capture data to smooth it out, and make it seamless in time.
From there, I applied the BVH file to the genesis figure (making sure to check "In Place Mode"). The hands, feet and head needed some posing/animating since that info wasn't included in the BVH file. I then saved the animation as a pose preset, moved to the end of the animation in the timeline, and merged the pose preset into the scene. Rinsing & repeating this effectively looped the animation.
Then I applied the genesis shape morphs as the run cycle looped. Finally, the FPS was adjusted from within the timeline in DAZ (this is the step that interpolates the tween frames).
Hope this made some sense!
- Greg
I really like that. I do post work to get the results I want and they are okay. I want more along the lines of what you are working with though. Doing a graphic novel with images like this for the baseline.
One of them is actully done up in DAZ3d, exported to Blender, adjusted for toon shading, 3 point lighting and rendered in the blender render engine.
The other is all that with a gradient touch in gimp, then run through a sketch program. The third is just another trial to go for a more dimly lit night with blueish tone.
These are just concepts, as I am not sure what style to do the novel in yet, but I would like to see what we could come up with mixing the render style you are working with, combined with the coloring styles.
Thanks Levonas, and thanks for sharing your results, and a little bit about your workflow in this thread. Not sure what tools you're using in Blender (your results are looking good, btw), but I've looked into Blender - specifically Freestyle & BEER, and they are interesting tools. For those who are interested, here are some links to get you started:
Freestyle NPR Rendering
BEER (Blender Extended Expressive Rendering)
Many things have changed since I started this thread, but one of the most enjoyable aspects of development for me has been (and is still) integrating different outline styles, shading styles and coloring styles.
Do you have a link to a 3D portfolio?
- Greg
I really hope you continue to develop this shader or whatever it will be Algovincian. I'd be in line to purchase. I can't believe the line drawings really do look just like a hand done pencil drawing. I should know, I draw every night before bed! I'm very impressed.
Thanks for taking the time to chime in, RAMWolf. I had some discussions with the powers that be @DAZ last year, but nothing ultimately came of it (around the same time Iray was introduced). It requires 3DL and wouldn't be a standard DAZ product, and that complicates things. Who knows what the future holds, but I would love for others to be able to render in these styles. In the mean time, development is definitely still on-going and I'm focusing more on using the technology personally.
- Greg
Why not sell through 'Rosity then? They have a pretty wide audience too. If I had this, while I love working with iRay, for line drawings and painterly sorts of styles I'd easily switch back to 3DL to do those WILLINGLY! lol
You don't really need to sell through a curated marketplace, which in any case takes a far larger proportion of the selling price. There are numerous third-party sites that host the content, accept payments, and automate the downloads for buyers, all for a smaller fee. As an example look to see how Adam Thwaites has set up his offerings. The downside is that you must do your own customer support. In my experience, if you create good documentation the support requirements can be kept low.
That said, these render/post tools seem like a good match for RDNA, based on the types of similar tool and script products I've gotten from them in the past. You might give them a shout.
There are some complications that will exist no matter who (if anybody) I may end up choosing to sell through. The biggest one being that while the first half of the process (the analysis shaders and the scripts that apply them) could certainly be packaged and sold anywhere, the second part of the process (the technology that uses the analysis passes to do the illustrating, sketching, painting, etc.) cannot. This is the case for practical, technical, and legal reasons. The second half of the process would necessarily have to be a service provided to the end user.
Thanks for the ideas, Tobor.
I started developing the analysis passes using DAZ Studio because (1) you can script DS, (2) it's easy to author 3DL shaders in DS, and (3) there is a huge array of high quality content for DS readily accesible for testing. I find DS to be extremely stable for rendering the analysis passes, and I'm very comfortable using it. The other infrastructure that DAZ has in place (accounts, sales, marketing, etc.) would seem to be a good fit, too.
That being said, there are a whole host of options, including ones that aren't simply selling through an alternative to DAZ. Who knows what the future holds!
- Greg
Well DAZ is really missing out on an opportunity to advance DS a bit further then. They aren't interested? Have they seen these renders? Come on DAZ, get your head out of your ass about this. This is the best I've seen in the way of a digital drawing script, bar NONE!
I've read stories from a number of PAs about how DAZ has given some of them the runaround, while on the other hand some products that have shown up in the store recently have not been up to the standsards of DAZ in the past. Back when Zev0 was starting out, he ended up putting his first few morph sets up over at Rendo rather that wait for DAZ. Now he's one of DAZ's top sellers and most of those products have been brought over here, but the lesson is that DAZ doesn't always understand what the customers are actually looking for. Frankly, I like the idea of buying through a brokered store because of the long term backup, but there are plenty of smaller stores that I'd be happy to buy something like this from.
First of all I can't speak for DAZ. Secondly, to be clear, I believe DAZ was interested if the technology could be packaged up and sold just like any other product in their store. I believe the fact that part of it could (the analysis pass shaders/scripts), but the second part can't (the sketching, painting, etc.) complicated things. They've obviously invested a lot in setting up their marketplace, and I can appreciate a desire stick to the system that is already established and proven to work. Also, if I had just made the major move to switch default render engine to Iray, I may not be overly enthusiastic about making special accomodations for new technology based on 3DL, either.
- Greg