Non-photorealistic Renders (NPR)

Headwax

Wonderland said:

head wax said:

Aanother Carrara render. This image has extensive postwork, but the good thing  about Carrara is that, straight out of the box, Carrara will give you a lot of different passes to play with. Plus it has an inbuilt toon renderer you can also combine with these passes in post.Plus it has an NPR renderer which really does need a bit more love from its users - ie exploration.

It also has a hair tool which gives reasonable NPR fur. You can also render this out as a different pass.

The passes I have used in this are diffuse, colour, coverage, shadow, beauty, index , primitive volume (for isolating hair) plus some others. The coverage layer gives object lines, but allows isolation of image elements for your post work, (as does the object pass - which gives more choice in masking for postwork) You can treat each pass eg shadow pass differently in post work and once combined in layers you have much more leeway than just trying to work with the beauty pass.

I've upped the saturation to get more of that old fashioned kid's book feel - I hope that works? The Character is Housemouse dressed up in some banged together clothes. Carrara is around 45 bucks at the moment (?) for pc members.

edit - forgot to erase the transmap outline of his whiskers ;)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SaveLove these! Definitely perfect for children's book illustrations!

Thank you Alicia, and I agree, post work is very relaxing :) Love how you have worked up your sixties girl. 

Here's some other Carrara work. Had more of a play with Hamlet this morning - no pun intended.

The image uses Carrara's built in Toon engine  plus a purchaed one called ToonPro.

 Also a BluePrint job via Filter Forge . The wall paper is Vintage via Ron Deviney's  shop here. I

 

 

 

 

Headwax

firewarden said:

Artini said:

head wax said:

Artini said:

How did you get into Toon render mode in Carrara - I could not find it.

Never mind - found it - it is under "Scene" "Filters"

 

 

Hi Artini, when the window comes up tick update and  full render and drag the window so it's really large and you will be able to see what you are doing!

 

Thanks for the tips. I have just rendered Darkwarld with it.

 

Wow! Very nice.

Pleasure, glad I did seeing the image you made :)

 

Oso3D

Maybe a simple thing, but an easy way to get a silhouette of figures:

Zero lighting, use white backdrop. Bam.

 

Oso3D

I love the style of Moebius... trying to emulate it a bit, though I suspect I'm going to have to break down and start playing with PWToon again to do it right.

Here's a combination of Iray, LR9K, and a whole lot of filters.

 

mmalbert

I'd been posting renders in the 3Delight thread but I do a lot of postwork, so maybe I should put them here instead. 

I've been on another "render the stuff you bought but never seriously used" binge, this time using the Calais Ruff and face morphs from OW Angel Equinox. I'd recently bought MDD's Vivienne for V4 and pink and gray are a favorite color combo. I don't usually do the high key glamor type of renders but they're fun every now and again. Made use of Topaz's Clean filter and a couple more from Filter Forge, with a texture overlay. The wings are an older prop I've used before and the same for Eisidor (sp?) Hair. I picked up some free bokeh overlays the other day and used them too.

 

Oso3D

Beautiful!

 

I usually post here because I render in both Iray and 3dl at various points and don't want to carefully account for which render is which.

firewarden

mmalbert said:

I'd been posting renders in the 3Delight thread but I do a lot of postwork, so maybe I should put them here instead. 

I've been on another "render the stuff you bought but never seriously used" binge, this time using the Calais Ruff and face morphs from OW Angel Equinox. I'd recently bought MDD's Vivienne for V4 and pink and gray are a favorite color combo. I don't usually do the high key glamor type of renders but they're fun every now and again. Made use of Topaz's Clean filter and a couple more from Filter Forge, with a texture overlay. The wings are an older prop I've used before and the same for Eisidor (sp?) Hair. I picked up some free bokeh overlays the other day and used them too.

 

Gorgeous! :)

mmalbert

Thanks! The Angel Equinox morphs are quite striking, and I also like that some of them are androgynous. Not a lot of those kind of morphs.

I don't use Iray very much because my computer is older and it takes too long. I do use it for the newer stuff I've bought, but I like 3Delight for what I do. BTW, another easy way to do silhouettes is the Fine Threshold plugin filter, especially if you want to use it on something you've already rendered and saved. It's also free:

http://www.mehdiplugins.com/english/finethreshold.htm

A few more recent renders from my quest to render stuff I forgot I bought. I recently picked up Poisen's HelmetZ3 and then remembered I had an earlier set I hadn't used. So I put an M4 texture on Scott 6 and did a barbarian, and then another one with the Scott's default texture using a light set I'd bought here that I also hadn't used before (Shadow Play.) 

Reposting an image I posted in the Jack Tomalin Appreciation thread -- I used several of the Divine Skies architecture props which I bought ages ago and never rendered, as well one of the airships from Air World that I hadn't used either. I could've put more people in it than the G2F and G3F, and belatedly realized I could've used the bought but never rendered Spirit of Punk train on that bridge prop, but I'll have to save that one for another day.

 

algovincian

mmalbert said:

Thanks! The Angel Equinox morphs are quite striking, and I also like that some of them are androgynous. Not a lot of those kind of morphs.

I don't use Iray very much because my computer is older and it takes too long. I do use it for the newer stuff I've bought, but I like 3Delight for what I do. BTW, another easy way to do silhouettes is the Fine Threshold plugin filter, especially if you want to use it on something you've already rendered and saved. It's also free:

http://www.mehdiplugins.com/english/finethreshold.htm

A few more recent renders from my quest to render stuff I forgot I bought. I recently picked up Poisen's HelmetZ3 and then remembered I had an earlier set I hadn't used. So I put an M4 texture on Scott 6 and did a barbarian, and then another one with the Scott's default texture using a light set I'd bought here that I also hadn't used before (Shadow Play.) 

Reposting an image I posted in the Jack Tomalin Appreciation thread -- I used several of the Divine Skies architecture props which I bought ages ago and never rendered, as well one of the airships from Air World that I hadn't used either. I could've put more people in it than the G2F and G3F, and belatedly realized I could've used the bought but never rendered Spirit of Punk train on that bridge prop, but I'll have to save that one for another day.

 

These are great, mmalbert - thanks for sharing!

- Greg

Headwax

mmalbert said:

Thanks! The Angel Equinox morphs are quite striking, and I also like that some of them are androgynous. Not a lot of those kind of morphs.

I don't use Iray very much because my computer is older and it takes too long. I do use it for the newer stuff I've bought, but I like 3Delight for what I do. BTW, another easy way to do silhouettes is the Fine Threshold plugin filter, especially if you want to use it on something you've already rendered and saved. It's also free:

http://www.mehdiplugins.com/english/finethreshold.htm

A few more recent renders from my quest to render stuff I forgot I bought. I recently picked up Poisen's HelmetZ3 and then remembered I had an earlier set I hadn't used. So I put an M4 texture on Scott 6 and did a barbarian, and then another one with the Scott's default texture using a light set I'd bought here that I also hadn't used before (Shadow Play.) 

Reposting an image I posted in the Jack Tomalin Appreciation thread -- I used several of the Divine Skies architecture props which I bought ages ago and never rendered, as well one of the airships from Air World that I hadn't used either. I could've put more people in it than the G2F and G3F, and belatedly realized I could've used the bought but never rendered Spirit of Punk train on that bridge prop, but I'll have to save that one for another day.

 

well those are wonderful! Care to give a rundown of your work flow? If it's not giving too much away?

thanks in advance :)

 

mmalbert

Thanks again! I've picked up a lot of ideas and inspirations from this thread, so more than happy to share tips. I frequently use Filter Forge and Topaz's Clean filter, though, and while they're not hugely expensive, they do cost a bit.

For the Faerie Queen: 

I always save promo images of what I buy or download. so first thing I do is open up a few  promo pictures  in my image editor to get a general feel for color, shapes, etc.

Then I go look for whatever else I need to fill out the scene, and what works best with the main stuff I've already chosen.

This can take a while (and invariably I find more things I forgot I'd bought.)

With the Vivienne texture I was drawn to the pale skin and subtle pink make up, so working colors were whites, grays, and pinks.

For the Calais Ruff, I found  a pretty white texture add-on and then I went looking for a hair prop to work with the ruff. Eisidor Hair had upward flow and also little wisps around the hairline that echoed the feathers on the ruff.

Also, it had horns. 

So then I went with a fairy theme and set about to finding a wing prop which would look right re: shape and feel. A texture add-on for The Wings had something that was soft yet pointy, and upward flowing to compliment the hair and ruff feathers.

Lighting was  neutral in color and not too strong to wash out the  pale skin texture -- used a free set by Valzheimer called Elite for 3Delight.

Loaded up the final render in Paint Shop Pro and added a background layer filled with a light gray similar to the majority of the image. Over the background layer I added the bokeh png overlay, rotated it to  match the flow of the rest of the image elements, colorized it to match the pinks, and set the opacity of that layer to 90%. 

Then I went back to the main image layer and added a slight 3D shadow effect to the left, with the shadow applied to a separate layer. I erased all of the shadow on the shadow layer except for the area around her face, just to set her profile apart a bit more from the background.

Merged the image and called up Filter Forge and used a saved preset from a filter called "StevieJ's Fantasy Softlens." Settings included below.

I copied the image result, undid the filter effect, and then pasted the filter effect over the original image and set the layer to 60% or 70%. It might've been a little higher or lower; I can't remember exactly 

(I go as low as 20% or as high as 80%. I like the increased contrast and more saturated colors, but the opacity level depends on the original image and what kind of look I'm aiming for.)

Merged the layers again, then opened up the image in Topaz Clean and applied a preset I'd saved (see below.)

I used the full effect this time, but sometimes I'll copy the result, undo it, and then paste it as a new layer over the original image and then fiddle with layer settings and/or the eraser to get the result I like. The Topaz Clean filter can distort some details too much even as others look fine, so it can be a more tedious process.

Then I added a subtle overlay texture as a new layer set to Soft Light. If the result is lightened too much, I'll duplicate the original image to a new layer, move that layer to the top and then set the layer to Multiply at around 20%.

Lastly, added the curved text as a new layer on Soft Light and then duplicated it.

This is pretty much what I did for the other images I posted, although the one with the airships also had Filter Forge's Colorizer applied to it, mainly to accentuate the original gold tones resulting from the uberlight set I'd used from Cloud Nine Domes.

With the airship one, most of the work was positioning the props, though I did end up swapping the two building in the front. I realized the sharp pointy bits on the front of the big airship worked better with angles on the one building while the rounder elements at the back of the ship worked better with the more rounded clock tower.

Was this sort of info helpful? If not, or if I wasn't clear enough about something, let me know.

 

Oso3D

I really like Iray sketchy shaders and, for me, Iray renders way faster.

That said, I'm finding myself returning to PWToon to get a reliable result. The key is getting very specific lighting so that filters will react the same way each time. And with Iray, getting even ambient light... is a HUGE pain.

In this image, I use PWToon and AoA lights to get:

Just outlines

Just colors (even, no AO light)

Shading (Distant + AO)

Also used LR9K to get some Main Camera lines because some of the helmet details tend to disappear (since they are primarily diffuse maps and it's hard to tease out the details just via bump)

 

thenotoriousjed

This is a project on working on now. Trying to get the look just right. It's 3delight and a mixture of Filtor Forge filters 

 

Vyusur

Well, here is my custom G3 character in Carrara wearing clothes of Genesis 1. It was a challenge to make his wheel-collar working in a proper way.
The first picture has been made in Carrara's Toon III style, the second one is the result of tweaking Carrara's NPR parameters. The only post work is my signature.

DollyGirl

mmalbert said:

Thanks again! I've picked up a lot of ideas and inspirations from this thread, so more than happy to share tips. I frequently use Filter Forge and Topaz's Clean filter, though, and while they're not hugely expensive, they do cost a bit.

...

Was this sort of info helpful? If not, or if I wasn't clear enough about something, let me know.

 

Well I loved seeing how you do your work. Going to try the Filter Forge effect. Your work is always lovely and I especially love the fairy.

Oso3D

Continuing to hone the style.

I'm finding PWToon isn't super necessary, because soft normal shadows work better for many of the filters.

So:

Flat color pass (ambient with no AO)

Soft shadow pass (turn all surfaces to light gray, use ambient with AO + distant light with soft shadows at various levels)

LR9K:

Main camera lines with colorID, make all surfaces/objects different

Fresnel

 

And composite, usually lightening the color and then increasing vibrance.

 

dreamfarmer

I finally picked up GenX2 and the first thing I did was port some Hiros to G3M, in pursuit of my own style. Not nearly as impressive as some of the other stuff here, but so much better than my original effort to hand-morph the same that I had to share.

(This is Hiro 5 added to somebody or other at 50%.)

 

firewarden

timmins.william said:

Continuing to hone the style.

I'm finding PWToon isn't super necessary, because soft normal shadows work better for many of the filters.

So:

Flat color pass (ambient with no AO)

Soft shadow pass (turn all surfaces to light gray, use ambient with AO + distant light with soft shadows at various levels)

LR9K:

Main camera lines with colorID, make all surfaces/objects different

Fresnel

 

And composite, usually lightening the color and then increasing vibrance.

 

Very nice!!!

firewarden

dreamfarmer said:

I finally picked up GenX2 and the first thing I did was port some Hiros to G3M, in pursuit of my own style. Not nearly as impressive as some of the other stuff here, but so much better than my original effort to hand-morph the same that I had to share.

(This is Hiro 5 added to somebody or other at 50%.)

 

Beautiful character! Is that postworked in Topaz?

dreamfarmer

firewarden said:

dreamfarmer said:

I finally picked up GenX2 and the first thing I did was port some Hiros to G3M, in pursuit of my own style. Not nearly as impressive as some of the other stuff here, but so much better than my original effort to hand-morph the same that I had to share.

(This is Hiro 5 added to somebody or other at 50%.)
 

Beautiful character! Is that postworked in Topaz?

Yeah, simple pass with Topaz Clean. My first stop in testing the waters for a character design these days.

 

Oso3D

Anyone know of a filter in Filter Forge that does something like that Topaz Clean? I like the effect and it'd be handy for what I'm doing.

firewarden

firewarden said:

dreamfarmer said:

I finally picked up GenX2 and the first thing I did was port some Hiros to G3M, in pursuit of my own style. Not nearly as impressive as some of the other stuff here, but so much better than my original effort to hand-morph the same that I had to share.

(This is Hiro 5 added to somebody or other at 50%.)

 

Beautiful character! Is that postworked in Topaz?

I thought it looked like it. I'm using very similar settings for some video game characters.

dreamfarmer

timmins.william said:

Anyone know of a filter in Filter Forge that does something like that Topaz Clean? I like the effect and it'd be handy for what I'm doing.

Not that I found, Will, although I do think you can achieve something close with a combination of multiple filters in Photoshop & Filter Forge. (Surface Blur, Posterize? in PS, Watercolor Painting in FF but you have to mess with the settings some...) it's been a while, though and I don't have saved notes because I so quickly just went straight to Topaz,

firewarden

With Topaz, you can buy one product at a time or the whole bundle. They sometimes have smaller sales on the individual filters. Cool thing is, if you end up buying all, they discount by the number of filters you have bought already. And on Black Friday, the bundle price is 50% off, minus a percentage representing the filters you already bought. I bought the four filters I really wanted, then grabbed the rest on Black Friday. 

mmalbert

timmins.william said:

Anyone know of a filter in Filter Forge that does something like that Topaz Clean? I like the effect and it'd be handy for what I'm doing.

I wish! It would have saved me some money...

Do you have Photoshop? Because there are a couple of action scripts that approximate the Topaz effect. Down side is that there's no way to alter or save your own setting presets in the same way you can in Topaz.

This one a free sample from a larger commercial set:

https://www.inkydeals.com/deal/mega-action-bundle/

The other one is part of this free artistic actions set:

http://blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/freebies/4-free-artistic-paint-sketch-ink-photo-effect-actions

Xero Graphics used to offer a bunch of free plugin filters for PS/PSP, among them were ones called "Improver," "Illustrator," and "Caravaggio." With patience and some fiddling, you could get Topaz-ish results, but only after doing some work in layers in an image editor. The old download site is gone but the plugins are also available here:

http://download.cnet.com/windows/xero-graphics/3260-20_4-6284297-1.html

 

DollyGirl said:

mmalbert said:

Thanks again! I've picked up a lot of ideas and inspirations from this thread, so more than happy to share tips. I frequently use Filter Forge and Topaz's Clean filter, though, and while they're not hugely expensive, they do cost a bit.

...

Was this sort of info helpful? If not, or if I wasn't clear enough about something, let me know.

 

Well I loved seeing how you do your work. Going to try the Filter Forge effect. Your work is always lovely and I especially love the fairy.

Thanks, Dollygirl! Re: the Filter Forge settings, ignore the part with 900 size at the bottom. I shouldn't have included that; it was the size of the image I used to get the screen shot. For that filter, use whatever shows up as the default, which will just be the size of whatever image you're using. 

mmalbert

Forgot to add that Topaz does offer periodic sales on their products, so signing up for their newsletter is a good idea.

Also, the Plugs-n-Pixels site always has discount coupon codes for plugins, including Topaz: http://www.plugsandpixels.com/

It's not a huge discount, but it might help.

Artini

Beautiful and well done images, mmalbert.

Artini

There are some descriptions on the net about how to do Topaz Clean without Topaz, if one has Photoshop available.

http://yeahps.tumblr.com/post/22454006896/topaz-clean-effect-without-topaz-plugin

How to edit without topaz clean.

 

Diomede

Did this for a recnt challenge. 

mmalbert

Thanks, Artini, and also for the tutorials. I have an old version of PS but prefer PSP; curious whether it can do something similar. Hmmm....

Pabu for A4 is in FastGrab right now. Cute set, shown on Genesis 1/Hiro5 and Hitomi