Non-photorealistic Renders (NPR)
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It looks decent, but WAY too dark. Then again, I think that about a lot of NPR images here.
I am looking for a telltale videogame looking, or a european graphic novel look of rendering suitable for both dark fantasy, scifi, X-files like, and life stories.
My first try is using Visual Novel Shaders and I am not convinced, maybe with some effect on photoshop it gets dirtier and interesting.. I am trying to realize how to use tonycam too but nothing rendered yet with it.
What do you think? Got any suggestions?
I think Telltale has a style where they use a semi-realistic texture instead of solid colors. They also add intentional line imperfections to make it look more hand-drawn. For the most part, I think solid, ambient colors give a better toon look from D|S with a few "real" surfaces thrown in, though mostly the textures I'm using are grey and white or black and white and used as opacity maps. For line work, I was unable to get the feel I was after with Visual Style Shaders, although it's a fine product and I used it for quite some time.
The path I went down for my cartoon style was to develop my own scripts to get outlines from D|S separately (which eventually evolved into the LineRender9000 product). What I concluded after trying for quite some time with Visual Style Shaders is that trying to have a single surface shader that gives control over color and outlines at once seems to make things too complicated to control effectively. Once I was able to generate outlines cleanly, I created my own Toon-style surface shader that tried to accomplish the specific things I really needed - ambient color with decent "specular" / "diffuse" control and texture tiling.
If I were going for a more Telltale style I think I'd play around with compositing a "realistic" render with a toon-style render to see what sort of effect could be achieved. If you want things to look a little edgier and gritty, perhaps play with getting a separate shadow map rendered out and composite that in to have high control over the shadows (though that may be more of a "Frank Miller" feel than what you want).
My latest NPR experiments. Tried a couple of different techniques in this one.
Gallery Link
You people are so wonderfully imaginative!
Interesting effect. How did you achieve it?
A few thoughts: The lines are a bit "muddy" looking; could you turn down the bump maps on the textures and try again? I think you might get some cleaner effects on some of the shirts. And I think this might look better without the shadows (the shadow lines are cluttering up the figure lines). And, no offense at all intended, but they're creepy looking! Very interesting effect.
Tried a little experiment and named it "The Experiment". DazStudio 3DL render
May we all have "experiments" that turn out so well. Nice job!!
What did you use to render? :) it's super awesome!
He used 3DL which is short for 3Delight rendering engine in DAZ Studio.
@FirstBastion Awesome job! I love it! :)
Very, very good composition. That little tilt gives it energy. It looks like a comic book cover. Good character design and strong expressions & body language tell the story. The one area where it needs work is the central figure is blending into the giant's loincloth. Ways to combat this would be:
Good start! This is a nice illustration and thanks so much for sharing it with us.
My latest effort at fine tuning my newest favorite npr process. I really like how it turned out.
Gallery Link
Very attractive -- it reminds me of some of the stuff I've ben doing lately, with the slanted shading. I don't recall, is this in camera or post work? If the latter, I would suggest the following:
Love the effect, and thanks for posting!
Cute toon girl. :) Because why not.
Thanks for the kind words @mmitchell_houston. :) This in postwork. Thanks for the tips. I'll see what I can do about that. For the moment, I've just been concentrating on getting the lines and the shading the way I want it to look. It's sort of a three step process in post right now. I'm still tweaking the process. I didn't do anything else to the final image like what you are suggesting yet. That will involve getting rid of some of the stuff my post processing adds to the detail on a couple of layers. Admittedly, a bit much and not quite how it should look quite yet. I did have to lighten up the area with the ship in the background as it was much darker. Next step now that I've almost got it looking the way I want is to fine tune exactly where the shading stays and where it should be removed. I'd have to agree that it should be removed from the smaller ship in the background.
As for the yellow dome, I think that is a reflection from the render straight out of 3DL and I don't think the post processing helped there a bit. I'm not real great with 3DL yet and there is still a ton of things I need to learn. I think it would have been better if I could have turned off reflections on that glass but I'm not sure how to do that yet. That's something I need to research. Reflections are good if you're just sticking with a 3DL rendered image but they don't work quite as well when you are adding cross hatching and shading work.
Having said all of that, I'm very happy with how far I've come with my process. Considering I didn't do any of this a short time ago, I've learned a lot.
Your process is coming along nicely, Knittingmommy - looks great!
In your own thread, you mentioned applying the process you used on your princpal image to this image. Now your speaking my language! It's (relatively) easy to get an individual image to look good when processed, but much more difficult to pin down a generalized process that works for all (or at least more) situations. What you were describing is what I've been doing for the last 20+ years.
A couple of thoughts on the off chance that you, or anybody else, is interested:
1. I find integrating lines with separate coloring to be challenging. There is a tendency for things to get too dark real quick. How you address this (without turning all colors into pastels) is a major piece of the puzzle.
2. I've also found a need to be aware of how thick lines are when compared to the size of the detail in a given image (and this also means having a target output resolution, as you've mentioned about your screen). One approach I use to address this is rendering larger. I usually render my lines around 3X larger than the desired output size (which also happens to correspond roughly to the difference between print and screen resolutions).
One implication of doing this is drastically increased render times, as 3x the width and height = 9 times the number of total pixels. This is the reason you always hear me harping on automation and batch processing - everything takes longer.
Enough babbling from me - sorry! I just love seeing other people getting deep into this stuff.
- Greg
Love the curves and the shadow, Diva! I hope you've saved this scene for future use . . .
- Greg
I will take those fine points you gave and keep them for future use. :) I appreciate the info. My process isn't near as complicated as yours and I don't know how easily I will be able to apply it to every situation. My guess is I will come across an image for which it absolutely will not work. I still have a lot of things to work out with what I'm doing. I'm having fun with it, though, so that is a plus. I definitely can NOT get some of the great things you can do with your process. Totally different approach to how you are doing things and mine is a little bit more low tech. Well, at least as far as I'm concerned because I'm not the one dealing with the math and scripting. I'm just using what others have already done in Filter Forge before me and adding my own twist to the whole thing and combining in ways that others may not have done before. I don't think what I'm doing and how I'm going about it will ever be in your league.
I think one advantage that you have with doing your scripts is that you have much more control over how things are done than I have with the way I do it. I'm picking and choosing the parts from different filters that I like and think I can use from Filter Forge filters and then adding more processes in Gimp with the addition of even more filters. There are distinct disadvantages to doing it that way. I have to fine tune things more in Gimp and each image takes longer. Things like what mmichell_houston was describing are definitely needed, too, because how I do things right now only gets me so far. Now that I'm closer to the look I was trying to achieve, I have to go into Gimp and I have to start modifying all of the layers to get it looking better. Delete lines that I don't really need and fine tune the shading.
The 20 years you've spent working on this stuff shows in how good your stuff is. :)
Seems like you may be selling yourself a bit short. I've always felt that 3D, and image processing in general, can be a tough space to operate in since it's part art, part technical. This makes it difficult/challenging, but it also presents an opportunity since not everyone is able to do it. There is no easy button, just like there is no spoon.
You clearly show an aptitude for both! The way you described what you're doing ("I'm just using what others have already done in Filter Forge before me and adding my own twist to the whole thing and combining in ways that others may not have done before") is called systems integration in my world. IMHO, this is as important, if not more important, than the nuts & bolts low-level coding.
- Greg
@Algovincian I guess I'm still not used the idea that I might be pretty good at this especially now that I'm getting more of the mechanics down. That was large hurdle for me. I've always been artistic. This is just a new, strange, scary medium for me. I can definitely see an improvement in most of my renders and I'm in love with postwork now that I have more skills so that helps.
Thanks for the kind words. It is always nice to hear that someone thinks you are good at something you've worked hard to learn and understand. There is still SO much that I need to learn. :)
Hmmm. I thought I had posted this back in November, but I don't see it in here. If this is a repeat, I apologize. Or maybe I put it up in the forum about M3 and older figures (both guys are Michael 3)?
At any rate, here is a simple illustration I did in Poser 11 using the Live Comic Book Preview and the Manga Studio 5 texturing technique/process I used on my comic book pages. This was created for my game, Gutshot, but I will not be using it because -- although I kinda like the style -- it just doesn't blend in with the other artwork in that book. Still, I'll figure out something to do with it. BTW: This is still a WIP -- If I do decide to use it, I will do a little more clean-up, and adjust the line width on the knife, plus a few other things.
@algovincian Yeah, I have it saved and ready for some NPR experiments. :) Thanks for the compliment - I like her toony curves as well. I dialed in some Start 2.0, as that character gives a nice hour glass shape. :)
@mmitchell_houston Nice action! Looks great!
Thanks!
Nice!! Love the Manga texture, Mike.
That makes 2 of us!
- Greg
I like experimenting with Iray on this subject, trying to convey some artistic ideas, and bring it closer to non-digital looking graphics.
Actually I have done many Iray experiments last year - here are some: