More Non-photorealisitic Renders (NPR II)
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P.S. I was trying to render a mecha that is mostly white, but has textures, I used pwToon on that. The background was transparent. I tried to change the color ID's, but that didn't seem to work.
Edit: My appologies, I ment to update my previous post, but created a new one. I got a lot of crap going on this week and I'm a little scatter brained.
Wait, hang on. Are you expecting to see the outline render inside Daz Studio? Because I made that same mistake too.
Like other scripted renderers, the outline render doesn't actually appear in Daz Studio's render window. In the render window, you'll just see the render as it appears from the camera (in this case, you'll just see the scene with the edge blend camera). Meanwhile, the actual generated outlines are saved outside of Daz Studio, using the folder and filename that you set within the scripted renderer panel.
Another thing to note is both the file format and the outline colour. I highly recommend setting the outline colour to black and setting the file format to either png or tiff. There have been times before where i've accidentally rendered unusable outlines due to both the background and the outlines being the same colour, as well as using the jpeg file format (no alpha channel).
This is actually the rason I left DS and went back to Poser 11. The outline mode (known as Comic Book Preview) is live in the window. This has multiple benefits, not the least of which is that you can instantly see very subtle adjustments to the shadows. Coupled with the power to easily set line thickness based on material ID, made it much easier (and more intuitive) for me to use.
That being said, I do miss the ability to work with newer models and props. But so far, the trade-off has been worth it.
No, I was expecting a line renders sent to the folder I pointed to. What I got was a transparent render with nothing there. I tried creating a solid color layer behind the LineRender, thinking I couldn’t see the lines. There was nothing there. My file format was set to PNG as always.
Well, unfortunately i'm out of ideas.
I hope you find out why it's not working for you.
I’ll figure it out.
Does it work if you set it to tiff? I know it recommends that, I don't think it should cause the issue you described, but I think I have always used tiff.
I like the idea of LineRender9000, and I have had some results that work look really good, but I also feel like I'm not comfortable enough with how this works and the different cameras and settings to know how to fix things when I get results that aren't what I want. I will have to experiment more based on the results here to get the outline results I like, because that is the one thing I consistently run into as an issue with pwToon, and I don't mind rendering twice to get lines separate from the rest.
I'll add that to my list of things to try. Hopefully, I can figure this out tonight.
Update: After reading the Google Doc again, I think, maybe, posiible I know what I did wrong. I won't know until tonight.
Character is Missy
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/379410/
Clothes by Wilmap
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/45589/wilmap-s-digital-creations-last-updated-11-september-2018/p1
Good news, I managed to get some output from a render I started from scratch. Now I just have to tweak the seetings and see if I can get it to look better.
OK, with the limited time I had, these are the results I managed to get:
Looks great! :D
A really powerful image @tkdrobert. I picked up Lineart9000 too but I haven't looked a it yet. I need to set some time aside to work my way through the guide as you have.
@akmerlow I love what you've done with those freebies. It really has the feel of a girl with the warmth of the sun on her skin.
@Mollytabby
Thanks for kind words!
That's quite the compliment coming from you.
Make sure, that the 1st time you try to use it that you are alert and have plenty of time. So far this week, my allergies have been kicking my butt and art time has been limited. I think that contributed to my ealier problems.
QUESTION FOR THE EXPERTS: Do you think my 2nd image would be better if I lightened the black shadows a bit? If so, would it be best to tweak the opacity of the shadow layer or use one of the blending modes. Last night, I ran out of time and totally blanked out on what the different layer modes do (Multipy, Overlay, Lighten, etc).
I don't know if I'm an expert, but the first things I noticed was that the shadows seemed a bit strong for this image. I would suggest using the shadow render as a guide to add colored shadows to the image: Darker flesh tone and a relatively dark blue on the clothes (if you don't want to put in that much work, consider just lightening the layer to about 50% and see what happens).
Also, I would consider cutting out the fabric between his legs (the back of his shirt tail) so that space is open: it will look more dramatic that way. And, finally, I notice that we're missing outlines on his bent leg where the fabric touches.
You are more of an expert that I am, that's for sure.
When is it a good idea to use strong shadows? If this was a Western-style comic image, would it be more approprate? Or only if it was black and white (which looked very cool by the way)?
Good idea on the skirt tail. I don't think this jacket has very good morphs but I could do it in post-work.
I fixed that missing line, then I think I undid the fix by accident. I was in bad shape last night LOL! I'm just glad I got it to work at all.
Expert? Me? Just obsessive-cumplisive, I think! :-)
Although I think your question is great (about East/West comic styles), for me it comes down more to coloring choices and mood. Even in my color work, I use super-strong shadows because I'm usually going for a "noirish" look. This blends with my style because even my color zones have strong cuts to delineate the color zones (like in the jumping hero illustration, or those Conan pieces I did a while back, or the fairy drawing I did for the contents page):
As you can see, I don't use many gradients for my colors: most of the time the colors have sharp lines to separate them. Your illustration has a lot of soft variations in color tones, which makes those sharp-edged, dark shadows seem a bit incongruous with the softer color edges, which is why I think softening them (or blurring their edges) on your work would be a better fit.
Of course (he said arguing the exact opposite point), sharp shadows are more dramatic, and if that's what you're going for then they do work. But I think in your case a lighter touch will look better.
Anyway, I'm happy to see you getting solid results from LineRender9000. Coupled with your other approaches, I think you may be getting close to something you can use to start your graphic novel.
In this illistration. I used different VSS setting that work better with Anime style . If I went back and used the VSS settings that I normally use for Western style comics (like most of my graphic novel concepts, superhero stuff, and my profile pic), then the darker shadows might work a lot better. I'll expiriment with that. I think you are right; with LineRender9000 and pwToon, I think I'm very close to getting the style I need/want to start my graphic novel in earnest.
Edit: The other thing to note is that I only used 1 light.
This is the image that I originally tried using LineRender on the other day. This time I was sucessful. I used pwtoon on the mecha, but kept the textures. LineRender worked really well although not perfect. I did several passes and tried different setting, but I still needed to touch up the lines in Clip Paint Studio (Manga Studio 5). However, had I done this using my old method alone, it would've taken me days instead of a few hours. It's not perfect but I think it turned out pretty well. Lots of post-work.
Oooh, nice! @tkdrobert.
Thanks.
Oh yeah, robotech! i mean.. Macross! Love mechas.
So, how do you combine all those npr shaders together?
VERY nice! I do see speckling on some of the lines, but this is a huge step forward (you gonna write up a tutorial for us, someday, bud?). What resolution are you rendering at? I'm wondering if going bigger would help hide the noise? That's the principle behind Dolby Noise Reduction. To eleminate the background hiss off the audio tape, he double the input channels and then, when it was reduced back to normal, the background hiss was cut in half. Using that principle, if you go really big on your renders then maybe the artifacts (visible along the leg outlines) might shrink to nothing when you downsample the image.
Or it might make them twice as big. I dunno.
Anyway, this is really good! I'm seeing improvement in leaps and bounds lately. You are definitely on to something.
The short answer, Photoshop (or any graphic program that handles layers).
The long answer: You can apply pwtoon shaders to a figure and maintain the textures. That will give it a cartoon look. Unfortunately, the method (Ctrl + click on the toon shader) didn’t work, so I had to replay all the textures to the diffuse setting in the Surface tab.
LineRender will create transparent ink and shadow layers that you can composite over your regular 3Delight render (color layer) in Photoshop, Clip Paint Studio, or GIMP (free). What I like about Photoshop, is I can load the main image (color layer), then copy and paste the ink and shadow layers right over it. If you use the “paste in place” option, they are lined up perfect. Once I get the line and shadows the way I like them, I'll merge them, however I do not merge the ink and shadows to the color render until I get it the way I want as well. With the color layer, I might adjust the brightness, contrast, vibrance, and/or saturation. I may also use a Topaz filter or two.
The image size was pretty big. I noticed the speckling, but I thought maybe it made it look more hand drawn? I'm probably going to be tweaking the settings a lot over the next week or 2, to get the best settings. When I nail down a consistent workflow, I'll write something up for you all. So many people have helped me, I don't have a problem giving back.
The little bit of work I did with LineRender9000 was also with a single light (that was back when I was really trying to get my noir look down). Now that I'm in Poser, I almost always use two lights: one as a Key Light, and the other for directional lighting to cast the shadows where I want them.
Another reason I stopped using LineRender9000 is that it is a scripted camera: I can only see the results after it is rendered. Poser does it live, making it very easy and fast for me to make tiny adjustments to see where the shadows fall on the face and body. But there are some neat models and figures in DazStudio that I would really like to use... so I may go back to it.
Thanks for explanation. So it's like different render passes.
btw, what's the closest thing to poser7's sketch in daz? i have pwsketch but i'm only on daz4.x now
Yeah, I had to render my mech 3 times before I was satisfied. I do like that feature in Poser. I wish they would find a way to incorporate that function into DAZ. I'd prefer it was a free feature, but I'd pay for it.
For whatever it's worth, using ctrl+double click on a shader preset should still be bringing up the window that lets you tell it to ignore maps. Did that dialogue not pop up? Otherwise what can happen is if the surface had a custom shader (like, for instance, the iray uber shader), channel names change so maps don't transfer over. There is a freebie iray to 3delight script that at least keeps most maps in their proper channels if that is what happened, I usually use that first and then apply the pwtoon preset if I'm starting with something that has iray shaders applied.