Carrara Challenge #38 - Cartoons and Other Guilty Pleasures - Welcome our PA sponsor, Phil Wilkes!

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Comments

  • StezzaStezza Posts: 8,051

    I haven't bothered with the G'MIC filters as there is too many options to go through and still not get the look I want so I'll give Cat 1 a miss.

  • DesertDudeDesertDude Posts: 1,235

    As usual, everyone's work is so awesome!!

    Here is my WIP entry...I already screwed up...deleted a bunch of work...lol

     

     

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  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,987

    As usual, everyone's work is so awesome!!

    Here is my WIP entry...I already screwed up...deleted a bunch of work...lol

     

     

    good start tho!

     

  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,987
    Stezza said:

    I haven't bothered with the G'MIC filters as there is too many options to go through and still not get the look I want so I'll give Cat 1 a miss.

    you can experiment with them in GIMP and use what you have learnt back in Carrara

     

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,168

    @UnifiedBrain - I think there may be a typo on the first page of the thread.  Are the entry and voting deadlines meant to be in March?

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  • HeadwaxHeadwax Posts: 9,987
    Diomede said:

    @UnifiedBrain - I think there may be a typo on the first page of the thread.  Are the entry and voting deadlines meant to be in March?

    I was keeping that typo a secret :)  - love your Spy v's Spy

     

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,168
    edited February 2018

    @DesertDude - I see a playmate for Stezza's dog and cat. Glad that I'm not the only one who models half and then duplicates with symmetry.  Gonna be a classic.

    @UnifiedBrain - RE: Mermaid The Girl - Amazing result - which GMIC settings did you stack?  I'm a little confused by your discussion of the categories of filters that you prefer.

    @Vyusur - wonderful bends in your custom hero.  Rigging and weightmaping must be excellent.  I agree with Misty that it could be Ultraman, but I won't link to the theme song again.  Love the little devil.

    @Bunyip02 - RE: alien, nice adjustments.  Great scene made even better by moving the plants to show off the raygun.  

    @Mistara - RE: question about requirements, if it hasn't been answered by UB yet, I believe that you don't have to use toon3 for two of the three challenge categories (homage and Stezza's dog)

    @Stezza - Beep, Beep, or meep, meep.  Either way, you are turning out these toon animals at an incredible rate.  Please let me be the lawyer when the coyote sues Acme Manufacturing.

    @Shlomi - I see now where you are going.  Looks cool.  Nice throwback to the style of Ralph Bakshi and Fire and Ice, one of my favorites.  Similarly, someone might try combining photoreal and toon like Cool World.

    @Chickenman - the tank and crew worked out nicely.  Looks like you have it under control, but if the pixelated terrain gives issues, remember that you can use toon override for individual objects under the effects tab.

    @HeadWax - RE: I think the caption is ":Is it a bird, a plane... no it's it's Stezza's dog!"  Can it be in the Stezza's dog category if the dog is not actually in it?  Love that!!!!!

    ​That is as far as I'm going back for now.  Quite an excellent collection of projects already. 

     

     

     

    Post edited by Diomede on
  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,168
    head wax said:
    Diomede said:

    @UnifiedBrain - I think there may be a typo on the first page of the thread.  Are the entry and voting deadlines meant to be in March?

    I was keeping that typo a secret :)  - love your Spy v's Spy

     

    Thank you very much.  

    I can confirm that Carrara generates a separate render pass for each filter if you check "post effect" under multipass rendering.  I'm still not sure whether each pass is truly separate or if the effect of the previous filters are multiplied.  Either way, yields a lot more tools to adjust images with.

     

  • Diomede said:

    @UnifiedBrain - I think there may be a typo on the first page of the thread.  Are the entry and voting deadlines meant to be in March?

    No, I purposely wanted to give the voters at least a month or two to decide the winners.

    blush

    Fixed, thanks.

    Early entries will start tomorrow.  At least I was going to get that right. smiley

  • UnifiedBrainUnifiedBrain Posts: 3,588
    edited February 2018
    Diomede said:

    @UnifiedBrain - RE: Mermaid The Girl - Amazing result - which GMIC settings did you stack?  I'm a little confused by your discussion of the categories of filters that you prefer.

    Some of the filters are very stylized - such as Fractilize and Brushify - and some are more like basic enhancements in Photoshop.  Some of the basic enhancement filters I like are Colors>Basic adjustments, and Colors>Comix color, and Artistic>Highlight bloom.  I used all three of those in the Mermaid render.  Just remember that order in which you stack them can make a big difference.

    Diomede said:
     

    @HeadWax - RE: I think the caption is ":Is it a bird, a plane... no it's it's Stezza's dog!"  Can it be in the Stezza's dog category if the dog is not actually in it?

    Nope.  Gotta have the actual dog, in some form or the other.  HW has created an incredible render, and with the suggested caption it could qualify for Category 2.

    Post edited by UnifiedBrain on
  • MistaraMistara Posts: 38,675

    workin in a list of guilty pleasures.  some more guilty of others. tee heee  picked 1 to work on.  nothing to do with hairy cucumbers lol

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,168
    edited February 2018

    My third project is a failure so far.  Recall that I was thinking along the lines of the cartoon "The Shadow Knows" from humor mags.

    .

    Thought it would be easy to turn off visibility and combine the shadows from one render with another.  Maybe its just too late at night and I'm tired, but its not working the way I hoped.

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    Post edited by Diomede on
  • VyusurVyusur Posts: 2,235

    Moxie's profile is so beautiful! Very touchfull scene.

  • de3ande3an Posts: 915
    Diomede said:

    My third project is a failure so far.  Recall that I was thinking along the lines of the cartoon "The Shadow Knows" from humor mags.

    Thought it would be easy to turn off visibility and combine the shadows from one render with another.  Maybe its just too late at night and I'm tired, but its not working the way I hoped.

     

    You could make two renders and then composite them in Photoshop or Gimp.

    I did a similar image awhile back and couldn't see how to do it all in Carrara. But compositing worked great.

    Since your idea would fall into the "Homage or Original" category, postwork is allowed.

  • so this is the line art background.

    Nice!  The background now looks somewhat painterly (which you wanted) but matches the foreground characters better.

    Are you doing this with no postwork?

     

    i take a carrara photoreal render to PD howler.

    post work it there.

    and then use the post work as a texture in the carrara backdrop in the toon render.

    the toon render has a shadow catcher and no post work.

    as the post worekd render is a content for the  toon render it should be ok for challenge #1.

    i made 2 post work versions in pd howler to get 2 styles, as you wanted a line art one.

    but the first idea was a painterly backgroud that's trying to be a realistic painting.

    like the backgrounds in the fire and ice film.

     

     

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,168
    edited February 2018

    Thank you, Veronica, for the nice comment.  I need to edit the rigging in the Moxie figure's hands, but am happy with the figure in general.  Admire your modeling and rigging, so appreciate your feedback very much.

    @de3an - you were right.  Once I loaded the multipass in an image editor, it was relatively straightforward to fix.  Guess I was just tired and frustrated.  Just needed to sleep on it.

    @Shlomi Laszlo - thanks for sharing your workflow.  Am trying to learn Howler for postwork and for backgrounds, so the description of your steps was very encouraging.  You've inspired me to sort through the boxes in the bottom of my closet and see if I can find Fire and Ice, and maybe Wizards, and some other great animation from that era.

     

    Here is The Shadow Knows adjusted.

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    Post edited by Diomede on
  • chickenmanchickenman Posts: 1,202
    edited February 2018

    Well I managed to find the time to play with it again.

    Again all done with toon3 added more humans and changed the texture on the ground because even increasing the number of tiles was not fixing it.

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    Post edited by chickenman on
  • VyusurVyusur Posts: 2,235
    edited February 2018

    Trying to stack G'Mic filters above Toon3. It came out not very impressive for me. I prefer subtle effects with clean edges, smooth islands etc.

    Brushify

    Pencil portrait

    60's Cinema

    Pencil

    Maybe adding some antialiasing could improve the picture.

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    Post edited by Vyusur on
  • Stezza said:

    I haven't bothered with the G'MIC filters as there is too many options to go through and still not get the look I want so I'll give Cat 1 a miss.

    I understand your frustration with G'MIC.  It has it's own set of challenges. For me, sometimes the results are not as good as expected, and sometime the results are better than expected.

    However, G'MIC is not a requirement.  You can certainly post a render with Toon 3 and no additional filters.  Or, if you want more options to manipulate the image, I assume that other Carrara filters such as those made by DCG will also work in conjunction with Toon 3.

    The point is, you may not get the exact look you want, but with a little experimentation, you can still get something that looks very cool.

     

     

     

  • UnifiedBrainUnifiedBrain Posts: 3,588
    edited February 2018
    Vyusur said:

    Trying to stack G'Mic filters above Toon3. It came out not very impressive for me. I prefer subtle effects with clean edges, smooth islands etc.

    Vyusur, I completely agree with you.  Those are the typical boring results when using a single stylized filter above the Toon 3 filter.  I mostly use the enhancement filters rather than the stylized filters.

    But I do still use the stylized filters.  For example, I really don't like the results when I use Brushify by itself.  Fotosketcher is much better.  However, Brushify is excellent for preparing an image for certain Fotosketcher effects.

    Further, some of the stylized filters work great in combination with other filters.  When I say "work great," I mean that something is generated that looks very good.  But it takes a bit of experimenting, as we are all exploring uncharted ground here. 

    You can also try using stylized filters stacked after Toon 3, rather than before.  You will likely get a very different effect.

    Even though I am a relative beginner in G'MIC, I was going to do a G'MIC basic tutorial prior to starting the Challenge, but there just wasn't enough time.  Plus, there is no requirement in this Challenge to use G'MIC.  G'MIC probably needs its own thread, for people who seriously want to add it to their toolkits.

    Post edited by UnifiedBrain on
  • Nice!  The background now looks somewhat painterly (which you wanted) but matches the foreground characters better.

    Are you doing this with no postwork?

     

    i take a carrara photoreal render to PD howler.

    post work it there.

    and then use the post work as a texture in the carrara backdrop in the toon render.

    the toon render has a shadow catcher and no post work.

    as the post worekd render is a content for the  toon render it should be ok for challenge #1.

    i made 2 post work versions in pd howler to get 2 styles, as you wanted a line art one.

    but the first idea was a painterly backgroud that's trying to be a realistic painting.

    like the backgrounds in the fire and ice film.

    I understand.  Basically, you are postworking a background, and then applying that background in the final Carrara render.

    Since this is more of a community-building Challenge, and not a cutthroat competition, it makes no sense for me to play the role of overly-strict rulemaker.  Plus, it becomes a slippery slope very quickly when defining what is permissible postwork, and what is not.  And further, people just get annoyed.

    I do think that when half the image is a postworked background, is does violate the spirit of the rule a bit.smiley  But your intent is good, so as far as I am concerned, it is OK.

     

     

  • I didn't put this in the entry thread, but if you enter an image and later want to change it - or even enter a different one - feel free.  You obviously need to do this before voting starts. 

    The idea is to allow it, but not encourage it.

  • Diomede said:
    @Chickenman - the tank and crew worked out nicely.  Looks like you have it under control, but if the pixelated terrain gives issues, remember that you can use toon override for individual objects under the effects tab.

    Toon Override!  I completely forgot about this, and in fact have never used it.  Thank you so much for the reminder!

    For those who may not know where it is, select your object at the "model" level, and go up to the "effects" tab at the top of the screen.  It's part of the dropdown of effects.

     

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,168
    edited February 2018

    @Chickenman - ground looks much better to my eye.  It might be my monitor, but the image seems a bit dark.  Perhaps trees with lighter colored (Fall?) leaves could yield more contrast?  Or, if you want the tank to blend more with the environment (soldiers usually want to blend in, after all), then ignore this comment.

    @Vyusur - I agree with you in general.  Most of the GMIC filters are a little heavy handed for my tastes.  Perhaps if you focused on the film and edge categories and lowered the slider values?  Lukas looks really good.   I created a Carrara global shader using Lukas's maps for Misty's carrara compatible character.  Hope it is OK to share.  I am trying to confirm that a person would need to own the maps to use the shared global shader.

    @UnifiedBrain.  I did some experiments with toon override but never posted them.  Like Shlomi, I had given thought to paying homage to Ralph Bakshi, except I focused on Cool World. instead of Fire and Ice. In Cool World, there are scenes with mixtures of toon and photoreal characters - sort of like Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  If I can find my tests I will post them in the WIP thread even though I have obviously already chosen my three projects.

    Post edited by Diomede on
  • Bunyip02Bunyip02 Posts: 8,592
    Vyusur said:

    Trying to stack G'Mic filters above Toon3. It came out not very impressive for me. I prefer subtle effects with clean edges, smooth islands etc.

    Brushify

    Pencil portrait

    60's Cinema

    Pencil

    Maybe adding some antialiasing could improve the picture.

    Hello Vyusur

    I found to get the more subtle look I was combining/merging the new GMIC image with the original render in postwork.

    Would be nice to specify a percentage effect when we stack the filters in Carrara.

  • VyusurVyusur Posts: 2,235

    Hi Bunyip!

    I never use my photo editor for the purpose of postwork. Just to sign my picture.

  • Nice!  The background now looks somewhat painterly (which you wanted) but matches the foreground characters better.

    Are you doing this with no postwork?

     

    i take a carrara photoreal render to PD howler.

    post work it there.

    and then use the post work as a texture in the carrara backdrop in the toon render.

    the toon render has a shadow catcher and no post work.

    as the post worekd render is a content for the  toon render it should be ok for challenge #1.

    i made 2 post work versions in pd howler to get 2 styles, as you wanted a line art one.

    but the first idea was a painterly backgroud that's trying to be a realistic painting.

    like the backgrounds in the fire and ice film.

    I understand.  Basically, you are postworking a background, and then applying that background in the final Carrara render.

    Since this is more of a community-building Challenge, and not a cutthroat competition, it makes no sense for me to play the role of overly-strict rulemaker.  Plus, it becomes a slippery slope very quickly when defining what is permissible postwork, and what is not.  And further, people just get annoyed.

    I do think that when half the image is a postworked background, is does violate the spirit of the rule a bit.smiley  But your intent is good, so as far as I am concerned, it is OK.

     

     

    ok

    to be realy fine i rerenderd the background file in low rez and a toon filter.

    uploaded it as a backdrop and renderd it.

    so you get a lesser version that's all carrara all toon.

     

    cartoon dragon1 Toon low rez.png
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  • Nice!  The background now looks somewhat painterly (which you wanted) but matches the foreground characters better.

    Are you doing this with no postwork?

     

    i take a carrara photoreal render to PD howler.

    post work it there.

    and then use the post work as a texture in the carrara backdrop in the toon render.

    the toon render has a shadow catcher and no post work.

    as the post worekd render is a content for the  toon render it should be ok for challenge #1.

    i made 2 post work versions in pd howler to get 2 styles, as you wanted a line art one.

    but the first idea was a painterly backgroud that's trying to be a realistic painting.

    like the backgrounds in the fire and ice film.

    I understand.  Basically, you are postworking a background, and then applying that background in the final Carrara render.

    Since this is more of a community-building Challenge, and not a cutthroat competition, it makes no sense for me to play the role of overly-strict rulemaker.  Plus, it becomes a slippery slope very quickly when defining what is permissible postwork, and what is not.  And further, people just get annoyed.

    I do think that when half the image is a postworked background, is does violate the spirit of the rule a bit.smiley  But your intent is good, so as far as I am concerned, it is OK.

     

     

    ok

    to be realy fine i rerenderd the background file in low rez and a toon filter.

    uploaded it as a backdrop and renderd it.

    so you get a lesser version that's all carrara all toon.

     

    Well, you didn't need to make the change on my account. :)  But other than it being a bit dark, so far I like this one the best. yes

     

  • chickenmanchickenman Posts: 1,202
    edited February 2018

    Well after another render I took a screen shot of the before toon3 filter and after the filter is applied and it does really make the image much darker with the settings I have. Not sure why it is so much dfferrent.

    I changed the tank back to the desert pattern brown to better see it and the personel interacting on and near it.

    Before

     

     

    After

     

    Toon 3 settings

     

    Will see if I have anymore time to do this or just put it to rest.

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    Post edited by chickenman on
  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,168
    edited February 2018

    Shlomi and Chickenman - can see more detail in these versions.  Well done.

    Like Shlomi, I had been thinking of Ralph Bakshi and combining toon outlines with other styles.  I found my Fire and Ice DVD and watched it again.  I must not have saved my old tests because I couldn't find them again.  So, I threw together a quick example of using toon override.  I have some Alice in Wonderland stuff from Daz (Bobby25 AWL for V4 dress) and Poser/contentparadise (toon rabbit, cat, and card soldier).  In the scene tab, I enabled the Toon 3 filter.  I made sure V4 and all her conforming clothes and dynamic hair were in the same group.  In the effects tab for the V4 group, I checked "toon override" and set the sliders to 0.  The shadows are strange because used separate lights for V4 and everything else.  Oops.  I'm not fixing it or anything else because this is just an example.  This method could be used to bring a toon style Roger Rabbit in a photoreal syle bar scene set, or a photoreal Dick Van Dyke in a toon set to dance with toon animals.

     

    Maybe someone will be inspired.  Maybe a catfight between Holly (from Cool World) and Jessica (from Who Framed Roger Rabbit)?  My three entry topics are exhausted.

     

     

     

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    Post edited by Diomede on
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