Better anime look for Iray?
XoechZ
Posts: 1,102
in The Commons
Hello!
I render my images in Iray. Iray renders fast and the images look very good. Sometimes too good.
I have purchased Aiko 7 to create some anime-like images. But the problem is that the images simply look too real (due to Iray?).
Now, what can I do to get more anime-like images with Iray? Where should I start tweaking? Skin, lights,...?
Please share your knowledge with me.
Thank you!
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Let me explain it better. Look at this image: http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/images/223716
This is a typical Iray render, looking almost photo realistic. This is what I also get out of it. Even if I use Aiko 7.
But I want to achieve something like this: http://www.daz3d.com/gallery/images/227446
Also an Iray render, but not really photo realistic. More like a painting. This is what I want to get.
I would try the Nik collection photoshop filters free from Google,lots of different looks here.
Postwork is going to be the best solution if you intend to stick with IRAY IMO
Well neither of those come close to anime style in my eyes that I've seen. The 1st comes closer than the 2nd. To me the 1st looks iRay texture set/render and the 2nd looks 3DL texture set/rendrer. As said the Google Nik collection will probably save you a lot of wasted render time and setup time trying to get the lighting and the correct texture set for the look you want.
Dont know if they work in Gimp ,but as they are free you could get them and try them in Gimp.
or you could try this DG Iray Toon Styles for Genesis 2.
nik collection works in Photoshop elements also which is not expensive
If you're looking for particular effects or styles according to certain images in the gallery, contact the artist or artists and ask about their workflow, either by PM or in the comments. You might have all the tools you need already.
Shibashake has turorials on their site
http://thinkdrawart.com/
I have to agree, none of those scream out anime to me as much as simple fantasy artwork. Part of the problem is that Aiko 7 herself does not really look at all like a traditional anime character, and certainly less so than her previous incarnations. From what I've seen not even the anime shaders give a truly "anime" feel" so much as maybe an experimentation in manga technique. But this is liable to change; even fans of anime are put off by many of the attempts at integrating CGI with 2D traditional anime as the two don't really mesh well without a lot of work.
Oh hey, thanks for the shout out, but I think the OP is probably trying for more Final Fantasy, and less Pokemon.
I don't think the second picture is particularly Anime either, but it is gorgeous. It looks to me like there was depth of field on the render camera, and a bit of postwork on the final image too. Postwork filters are a huge time saver, and give great results, but you can make do without them too. My quick tip of the day is to take your render into your 2D image editor, make a gaussian blur layer, lower the opacity and set it to soft light blend mode over the original image. Top it off with a brightness/contrast layer and experiment with blend modes and opacity of the various layers. Scorpio's link had some really good stuff, and do a search for postwork tutorials too. Quite a bit of postwork is trial and error. Good luck.
Yes they do but forgive me for not searching the net and posting the link. I have a lot of cabinet sanding to do today.
The Nik Collection is really only standalone programs and not true plugins - so you have the option of starting them from a program menu or you can search the net and configure Gimp to launch them via the typical launch program with argument(s) (the argument(s) being the current active image you have open in Gimp.
Take you about an hour to search, download, configure, and test.
Thanks DestinysGarden for your tip of the day. My composition is not Anime either, but I like how it added warm and softness to the skin.
It also started as an iray render, but then, I have played with it in ps.
There are two routes you can go to make these work in GIMP. The first will involve a little script editing. I don't know how familiar you are with that. You can use the Shellout.py for GIMP and edit the script and that should work with GIMP 2.8 following the steps here. If you don't mind using the beta version of GIMP 2.9 you can just install the version where it is already done for you by Partha.
Also, the NIK collection will work as a stand alone program, but it overwrites your photos so if you go that route make sure you are using a copy of your image and NOT the original. I went with the Partha version because I wanted to be able to use the .exr files that are generated by Iray Canvases and GIMP 2.9 can read these while GIMP 2.8 can't. I found GIMP 2.9 was actually pretty stable. Some information boxes popped up to give info to the programmers, but nothing crashed in the 2 months that I've used it.
... then, I've added the background, but I am not so sure, if it looks ok...
Its going to be a combination of what you do in the renderer and post work. I will add my vote to using the Nik Filters as well.
Seems to me it'd be way easier just to use 3DL.
Ain't that part of the reason to do it in Iray, though?
That's cool, I have been using 2.9 for ages. Actually, I'm wondering whenever 3.0 is going to release. It seems like it has been stuck on 2.8/9 forever. I've never had an outright crash in 2.9, either. Only some stuttering when working on massive textures with 100 other tabs open, which was probably not the best of ideas.
Thank you very much for the info, folks! I'll be looking into this.
Looking at the OP it is hard to tell what they really want even though they say they are wanting anime style renders which are usually in most cases are either Cel Shaded or in Cartoon form the images they supply as to what they want to have are not really what anime images normally look like..
And if it is Cel Shaded or Cartoon form it is a waste to use a renderer that is primarily designed for realistic looking renders which Iray is..
I have to disagree. Iray, 3Delight, and LuxRender are art tools, not art products themselves: each has advantages and disadvantages, strengths and weaknesses over the others. If what you know best, or what you have at your disposal to do what you want to do, is not The Very Best Tool for the job, then you use what you have instead, as all of us did trying to make photo-semblant images in early versions of 3Delight before Iray was even an option. Likewise, if a key need for your NPR or Cel-shaded project is available only in Iray, then use Iray and figure out how to make an Iray image into cel-shading.
My recommendation is to do at least two passes -- one for color, another for shading. The color pass might be best in Interactive Iray, to get a mostly uniform ambient/environment light (I haven't played with it extensively, but this seems to have tools that might help).
Then, if you want outlines, either do a third pass in 3DL for outlines with PWToon or similar. If you have a pressing need to use Iray for all things, you can, laboriously, set material ID and do a material ID canvas, that you can then do 'find edges' with in Photoshop or similar. Only problem with this step is that translucencies don't work properly, so this requires a few extra steps for transmap hair and similar.
I've occasionally done a mixed thing -- color/shading in Iray, then outlines with PWToon. Then I can do funky filters with the first pass to make it look artistic, and carefully blend in the outlines. If you do this right, and have appropriate hardware, it can actually be faster than doing it all in 3DL, because with Iray you can more easily get a uniform image that you can stop rendering whenever it's good enough -- and with a lot of the filters, there's no point doing a 'complete' 3DL render or a high quality Iray render.
Actually it looks very good, the skin tones and lighting are excellent. The face looks strangely distorted though, that and the ubiquitous problem of hair that doesn't react to gravity the way real hair would.
It looks good, but it doesn't look remotely like anime.
I would suggest 'flattening' the image, colorwise (posterise? Something like that) and then doing a material ID canvas or something to get borders between objects that you can capture in Photoshop find edges.
I'll try to come up with an example in a little bit.
Another possible approach is to use recolor... convert the images to black & white, filter to get a nice drawn look, then paint in solid color underneath so that it's 'shaded' by the lines and whatever you've generated.
I actually really like this... thanks for encouraging experiments. ;)
This started as a simple render using headlamp to cut down on shading (originally I had meant to do some other stuff to shade, but it came out nicely, so...)
I took one copy and ran it through FilterForge's Pen and Ink sketch, to make a B&W image (you can do similar things with Photoshop and a bunch of other stuff, to your liking -- the point is to get a sketching ink-like shading). If you want a more solid looking shading style, you can experiment with posterize or watercolor or whatever. The point is to separate 'shading and outlines' from 'color' and then reintegrate later.
Then I used Soft Light to composite the altered sketch with the original image. Used a LITTLE blur on the sketch to make the lines look a little more natural.
Really, just playing with contrast, saturation, dodge and burn maybe with posterization can get toon/anime like effects... First two are Star with morphs, original Star in Poser, the other G3 Star DS Iray and then a test render of Sunny which was an experiment trying to render on a Windows laptop with a horrible screen then working in Gimp because I only have pre-CC Photoshop on my Mac desktop. Sunny wasn't intended to look anime-ish, but kinda turned out that way since the screen was so terrible on my laptop, I couldn't tell what I was doing... I would still want to improve it in Photoshop on my Mac. You can even get some really cool effects with mobile apps!
Thanks for the insights. I am no so sure about the hair and how it react to gravity. I always thought, that short hair is not affected by gravity as the long hair do.
Re: illustration-purposed filters, I use Filter Forge a lot but I also use Topaz Clean. Most of the time, I use them together.
Topaz Clean is a stand-alone utiity, though you can use it through Photoshop as well as Paint Shop Pro. It allows you to fiddle with settings and save presets. I mostly use the results as a secondary layer with lower opacity, but it can work well at full effect too.
For those on a budget, there are a couple similar Photoshop actions that are free:
http://blog.spoongraphics.co.uk/freebies/4-free-artistic-paint-sketch-ink-photo-effect-actions
https://www.inkydeals.com/deal/mega-action-bundle/
The second one is a free sample from a larger Photoshop actions bundle. I did a test with it here.
These actions don't work in Paint Shop Pro, but quite a few work in older Photoshop programs, even CS2.
Another useful freebie is FotoSketcher. It's a stand-alone utility, so you don't need Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro etc to use it. You can alter settings and save them as presets.
One more budget-friendly resource: the free plugin filters from Xero Graphics. If I recall correctly, the Improver, Illustrator, Line Drawing, and Caravaggio effects work pretty well, used as layers, for illustration purposes. As long as the plugin has the .fb8 extension, it should work in PS as well as PSP (I have PS CS2 and PSP 7/X3/X8.) The Xero filters allow you to adjust settings and save the results as a preset.
A few examples Topaz Clean -- and maybe other filters too; I can't remember with the older ones. The Mad Scientists one is newer and that one was definitely just Topaz Clean at full effect, with a texture overlay added to it.