More Non-photorealisitic Renders (NPR II)

juve_satriani · April 2019

Hi...these bunch of screenshot my PWToon setting to getting smooth render

I hope useful for you . Feel free to tweak- enhance and make it better

Thanks

NOTE :
This render use two lights , AoA distant light with 75% intensity and 192 192 192 as color and AoA ambient light with 25-30% intensity and also 192 192 192 as color . I think you can use equivalent lights if you dont use AoA light sets

For render setting , All parameter Default except changes on : Max Ray Trace Depth set to 1 and Gain set to 1.2

For main figure outline ,I`m using Geoshell and the rest using outline from pwToon

3WC · April 2019

mmitchell_houston said:

This looks really cool. Just one suggestion, take it for what it's worth. The letter spacing looks really W I D E to me, like twice what it needs to be. I think it would be improved by condensing it. :)

mmitchell_houston · April 2019

3WC said:

mmitchell_houston said:

This looks really cool. Just one suggestion, take it for what it's worth. The letter spacing looks really W I D E to me, like twice what it needs to be. I think it would be improved by condensing it. :)

Thanks for the comment. You are right about the letter spacing and I probably will tweak it down a bit. Thanks for reminding me to do that. It does need to be a little wider than normal, though because the first printing of the comic is set for pages that are 5.5 x 8.5 inches (letter size folded in half). I need to make sure the lettering is large enough to be read at that size and one aspect of that is having a little extra space between the letters and the words.

I'm seriously thinking about having two versions of the comic: one for the small printed size and one for the larger, normal comic size. That would let me tweak the lettering to be a little more appropriate for each size.

Thanks again for reminding me to do that.

mmitchell_houston · April 2019

juvesatriani_S said:

mmitchell_houston said:

Since it's been a while since I've posted anything new, here's something I don't think you guys have seen, yet. Here's a WIP page from my comic DAYS GONE, and it includes my thumbnail sketches at the bottom. Before I work on a comic, I completely sketch it out on typing paper to get the general pacing down. This stage is VERY rough and loose. Then I sketch it a second time, this time on a page with the proper comic book dimensions pre-printed on the paper. This forces me to really think about panel shape and story flow. Again, the artwork is still super rough and I have lots of little notes scattered on the page to remind me of what things are, and things like motion or effects (or in one case, that a big blob of shadows is the cavern wall).

I typically do not paste the thumbnails into Manga Studio (aka Clip Studio Paint) because I have a binder with all the sketches (and I have scanned them into a PDF that I can easily open). But, in this case I was participating in an online Webinar about visual storytelling and I wanted the other participants to see how I built from the thumbnails into the final panels, so I merged them.

In this scene, the hero is having a crisis at the top and is going into a monologue. This takes place across the top of the pages.

At the bottom, Nirona the Fairy is having fun going on a "shopping spree" throughout the treasure trove. She is flitting about picking up pieces of treasure, then quickly discarding it as something else catches her eye.

================

The top panels are still roughs. I need to clean up some things. For example, in panel 2, his hair should be hanging down more from his face to show that there is gravity in the scene ;-) Also, in panel 2 I need to finish postwork on the dragon. On a previous page I show that the dragon is missing a claw, so I need to add that detail here. Also need to add a cut or two to the hero. And in panel four I probably need to draw in his nipple so that you can better figure out the odd twist I have in his waist. As it is, I don't think the navel and the uppper body look like they are lining up properly (they are, but I just have that odd twist in his abdomen so, without the nipple to serve as a reference, it looks odd). Oh, and the background of the top panels needs a little work: This is about what it's going to look like, but I want to increase the resolution of the sketchy lines so they appear smoother.

UPDATE: Maybe I'll just delete the navel in panel 4? I think that would solve everything.

Anyway, I look forward to your feedback. Keep in mind, it's still WIP.

Awesome BW setup and those line from poser ? Wow ..thats great !!

Thanks! Yes, the linework comes directly from Poser Pro 11. The “Live Comic Book Preview” was introduced with vers. 11 and is available in both the base and pro versions.

It has several cool features, including:

Different material groups can be assigned different line weights
You see exactly what’s happening in real time when you tweak the lights (unlike rendered solutions where you only get to see what happens after you render the image
The renders are FAST (I can render a 2500-pixel wide panel in about 1 minute

mmitchell_houston · April 2019

Here's a note about the lettering on my pages. I know that ALL CAPS is the norm for comics, but these days Sentence case (just capitalziing the first letter of the sentence, like we do when we write or type, is slowly gaining ground. Although ALL UPPERCASE is still the norm, Marvel Comics does use Sentence Case on its books Unbeatable Squirrel Girl and Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur, just to name two mainstream books that have switched to sentence case.

Just thought I'd toss it out there for discussion.

Headwax · April 2019

wsterdan said:

Headwax_Carrara said:

This one is absolutely exquisite! All of your recent picts have been inspiring, but this one really stands out to me. Very, very well done!

-- Walt Sterdan

thank you very much Walt :)

Headwax · April 2019

mmitchell_houston said:

Headwax_Carrara said:

sorry double post! gah

Headwax · April 2019

mmitchell_houston said:

Headwax_Carrara said:

Here's one worked up @mmitchell_houston and the precursor without post at the bottom. I used about 5ive different types of render passes from carrara dand worked on them separately then combined them, Not sure if the beauty pass contributed at all in the end

There's also the King of The Mice without post - It's noggins rat added to genesis - the hair is Carrara - the rat head is slightly morphed - the daz mouse doent have a working mouth from memory - but he appears in the first post of the carrara NPR thread. I was trying to get a pencil effect with the Kind and the dancing rats buit could have gone the colour way. Photodonut and PS elements are the main weapons. I'd highly recommend spending a month with Photodonut.... There's hidden gems amongst the chaff.

Thanks for the tip about the rat. I have only done a few things with the House Mouse (I think it's mouth does open, though I honestly don't recall). But I definitely like this figure better. It has a more classic illustration look. Thanks so much for posting one of the original renders for each of your . I think it's fun to see just how vibrant the colors are in contrast to the airy lightness of your final results. Although I really like the look you have achieved, I've been wondering a few things about the geometric edge outlines generated by Carrara.

Are you using them in these pencil sketch illustrations?

Can the outlines be thicker?

Can you have different thickness outlines in the same render? Some heavy and some thin?

Your work has definitely put PhotoDonut on my radar, that's for sure!

thanks for that :)

!

1) Yes

2 and 3) Carrara has a third party toon plugin (now free) - you can chhose the width of the outlines and also wethere it does lines on different shader domain's edge (? brain infarct at the moment) - (it also has an inbuilt toon filter which is handy)

I use it to cxreat lost and found edges by judicious erasing and opacity - also inverting it and using it with screen parameter5 can knock back certain dark lines underneath

3) Yes, but you need to combine two renders of different out lines width

Carrara has other types of passes you can extract line work from and also guide the hatching (not cross hatrching) in photodonut with - if you get a chance to play with carrara seriously I can give you a walk through - but by the look of it poser does the hatching natively

Carrara depth pass is also suprisingly handy for generating differnt line widths if using Topaz simplify - not fine lines but outlines

iI havent tried it on the object pass but I am sure you can get usable lines from that as well

- as with most things its the set up of the renders with later handwork in mind which is important - humans are better than machines as far as 'art' goes.

also worthwhile looking at the shadow passes and the ambient occlusion ones for the b and w work

here's another go of the same subject with photodonut working on/with a few of carrara's render passes - sorry tonot answer sooner been on hols

vrba79 · April 2019

It still needs just a bit of tweaking, but this dzDefault+Postwork combo I'm cooking up is nearly ready for a public tutorial release.

juvesatriani_S said:

Hi...these bunch of screenshot my PWToon setting to getting smooth render

I hope useful for you . Feel free to tweak- enhance and make it better

Thanks

NOTE :
This render use two lights , AoA distant light with 75% intensity and 192 192 192 as color and AoA ambient light with 25-30% intensity and also 192 192 192 as color . I think you can use equivalent lights if you dont use AoA light sets

For render setting , All parameter Default except changes on : Max Ray Trace Depth set to 1 and Gain set to 1.2

For main figure outline ,I`m using Geoshell and the rest using outline from pwToon

I'm geniunely curious as to what advantages AoA lights have over regular lights, when using something like PWToon.

juve_satriani · April 2019

It still needs just a bit of tweaking, but this dzDefault+Postwork combo I'm cooking up is nearly ready for a public tutorial release.

I would love to learn about your approaches since all about cel/Toon/Smooth Toon always my thing

I'm geniunely curious as to what advantages AoA lights have over regular lights, when using something like PWToon.

I`m just tinkering and see if tool I`ve used behave like I want or react with my simple logic LOL

First of all , I have very limited knowledge about how Nagic math behind shader and lighting in Daz Studio . So I`m not sure if I can give you proper and correct answers . And since I`m in process to reformat my HD I cant give you sample images , but I`ll be posting those render test after everything is done .

There are things which at I think AoA light sets give me leverage than another light sets

1. Tagging Features and Alternate Primitive Shadow
For tagging I can choose which item or materials I need to lit up or not . Sometimes I found some shader setting already Ok on its own but not OK (washed out/color shifted) when I did global lighting adjustment .

Meanwhile Alternative Primitive shadow although only slightly makes differences but for Toon or Cel Shading I tend to get simplified shadow shapes . Thats mostly useful for Hair shadow in figure`s face - nose - Cloth or something like that

2 . Ambient lighting and For More define shapes

Lately I`m doing experiment to find solution to speed up my workflow to create NPR images. And one of the trick I found was using proper and finished background images to start with . I`ll be showing you in another post about how using Finished BG images can help you to get faster and better result without too much tinkering in Daz

Because of that method above , I need to have global light rig to makes my scene render closely at possible with my BG image. AoA Ambient light help me to get in there . Sometimes with AO on or OFF

My pwToon setup mostly depend on Rim features . AO function (at least for me ) help me to get better spread color /paint look in both main diffuse shading and Rim Bound . Another plus is to redefine slightly beveled or curved geometries shape which sometimes lost because most Toon Shader tend to work in Ambient domain

Thanks for asking

Headwax · April 2019

"Two Pines in a Yellow Forest" nominally 13 x 10 inches

Post work on multiple Carrara render passes - depth pass for the atmosphere - Cover Pass for the line work etc

Headwax · April 2019

Carrara render passes combined for Carrara Challenge

Headwax · April 2019

Caustic Groover - base render derived from present Carrara challenge.

juve_satriani · April 2019

Headwax_Carrara said:

Carrara render passes combined for Carrara Challenge

Fantastic !!!

juve_satriani · April 2019

This my first test render for G8 on PW Toon and Default DAZ outline render

Nothing fancy Postwork except stacking outline render - overal color adjustment (HSL-Selective Color and Color Lockup ) and give texture overlay via layer FX .

juve_satriani · April 2019

Finaly bought Poser although I`m not sure to using as main NPR generator at least until getting new machine .

RIght now its very slow in my laptop . But the Comic book preview features is awesome . I Hope someday DAZ Studio will include something like that . This Quick test for Comic Book Preview render and give it bloom in PShop

Artini · April 2019

Just found the free RENDERBOX - Post Processing asset at Unity. It contains many different effects.

Below are sample renders, with 2 different effects, made with it.

juve_satriani · April 2019

Artini said:

Just found the free RENDERBOX - Post Processing asset at Unity. It contains many different effects.

Below are sample renders, with 2 different effects, made with it.

Those wonderful Render !!

I wonder about learning curve in UNITY and machine requirement to get smooth experiences with it . Would you share your knowledge about bring DAZ content in unity especially for produce NPR renders/images