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Comments
You're absolutely right, Mary - fast motion is definitely on my list of things to figure out exactly how to depict.
The truth is, I wasn't even thinking about that in this case, though. I fully expected a black line to be drawn by the algorithms for each spoke. Hopefully an adjustment can be made to render the spokes (stationary) correctly without having any unintended consequences!
Thanks for taking the time to stop by and chime in.
- Greg
Some fantastic stuff added since I last poked my head in here! Very cool to see comic-style renders! I'm loving these. The jester one is so cool (Well, they all are, but I like that one the most of the new ones).
Where did you get the balloons and text, by the way? Those are a great touch. I've been wanting to get some comic-type balloons and text but am not sure of a good place to get them.
I've bought Motion Artist and Comic Life to speed up panel layouts, speech balloons, etc. (rather than doing them manually in pShop).
With Motion Artist, I was hopeful that I could create interactive navigation (page to page, as well as panel to panel with panning/zooming), parallax effects, etc. Unfortunately, the HTML5 output it generates didn't work on mobile devices which made it a no-go.
Comic life is a much simpler program, but it will handle panel layouts, speech balloons, etc.
Are you going to do some comics? I hope so as I'd love to see anything you come up with - I'm sure they would be great!
Thanks, Diva. Finally found some time for 3D stuff in the last week or 2. Now it's time to practice getting/creating/modifying the right assets for different projects, rendering the scenes, and laying out lots of panels/pages! There's still many situations that I haven't tried and am not sure how to deal with.
- Greg
Oh yeah, I've heard of Comic Life. Thank you, Greg! I'll have to see if I can catch it when it goes on sale.
I would love to do a comic, but I'm not sure if I have the writing skills and/or visual storytelling skills for a decent one. So I'm really just looking for a few assets to maybe do a short 4 or 5 page thing to see if I even have what it takes to put something like that together. I know it can be some work going from a story, to storyboarding each scene, to getting everything to flow right visually. Though being stuck at home right now because of Covid-19 is giving me no excuses not to buckle down and at least try it. As long as I can get the assets I need together to do it.
I'm really looking forward to seeing what you come up with too. Your visual styles are so beautiful and exciting to look at, I think they would translate quite well to comics (as you've previewed here so far). :D
Yeah I know exactly how you feel. It's a totally different skillset. Putting together the actual storytelling & storyboarding seems daunting to me, too. Collecting/creating all of the necessary assets and handling the actual NPR is challenging/time consuming enough. Even if I had unlimited time (which I don't), not sure it's in my wheelhouse lol.
I'd still like to take a stab at doing some finished pages to keep the development moving forward. Would be helpful to use as something concrete to potentially present to storytellers who may wish to collaberate in the future, too.
In the mean time, here's a few more background environments - thank you @Stonemason! Ran out of time today, but I'll throw some figures and text on top in the next couple of days (and hold off on judging the BG algo's output until then):
- Greg
Oh! I like the last environment the most! It looks straight out of a manga! :D
Thanks, Diva - I'm pleased with the output from the BG algo, too.
Here's a Tarzan WIP with the forest/jungle background. Been playing with some other text effects, too:
There's part of me that really wants to make the figure more detailed. I've certainly developed algos that are more detailed than the one used to depict this figure, but I'm not sure they will go well with text effects, or look good when resized and displayed on mobile devices.
- Greg
Been playing with adding some indication of movement:
They were created by adding 2 planes with alpha maps which were positioned in 3D space in the scene. Other than that, rendered as usual by the algos.
- Greg
The action lines created with the planes is really a clever way of doing it!
I like the clean inked look of this image too. Bravo!
Fantastic work!
Glad to hear you enjoy it, @WolfLQ - thanks!
Thanks, Diva. I'm still playing around with the prop used to create the effect - adding all sorts of morphs to create straight lines, different arcs, etc.
The plane prop was given the appearance of having some thickness by applying a bump map, which was made simply by blurring the alpha map a bit. This allowed the edges to catch some light and really helps the algos to render the prop. Here's the fresnel pass that shows what it looks like:
There is no light source in this type of render pass, but the motion prop appears to be lit from the left (unlike the everything else). I believe this is happening because of the way 3DL processes the bump map. At first, it was annoying and I considered using displacement instead to avoid this, but it actually helps the algos render a more interesting result. Hoorah for happy accidents!
- Greg
That's a neat idea. I never would have thought to use something like that for a motion effect. It's quite effective. Adding effects like that in post can be hit or miss, but the way you did it gives the effect a seamless look - as part of the render. Makes me wonder what other ways planes and primitives can work in renders like this to cut down on (or even completely eliminate) the need for any post-work.
Love that work! But how do you achive that? English is not my main lang, so I read through the post but I don't really get if I can get that resoult in some way or I have to buy your shaders or what ^^''' sorry
Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to comment, @emanuelegln - it's much appreciated. The whole process is something that I've been developing for decades, and unfortunately something that can't be packaged and distributed.
One of my long term goals, though, is to use the output from the algos along with the analysis passes to train a neural network. The resulting network is something that could be compiled, packaged, distributed. That being said, I've failed so far at designing/training such a network that produces the results I'd like to see.
- Greg
I've been taking a break from the algos and spending my free 3D time testing (playing) with @Strangefate's Bone Breaker set that's in development. Be sure to check out his thread for tons of images of the upcoming set:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/5596741/#Comment_5596741
It comes with so many components - it's crazy how versatile it is. It was so much fun playing around and making the Conan the Barbarian inspired image, as well as an image of 3 members of the Bone Breaker clan on the march through the woods:
I just loved the war paint that comes with the set. It gives off such a fantastic tribal/aboriginal vibe!
- Greg
And here's the giant Bone Breaker NPR style:
So much delicious detail for the algos to chew on . . .
- Greg
Whoa! That's so epic! :D That came out SO COOL, Greg!
Thanks, Diva - I still don't like the pose (it's the same as in the Iray render) since he's grabbing his sword with the wrong hand - what's he going to do with it if he pulls it out with that hand holding it like that? lol
The pose originally came about because it was hard to find a place for him to put his left hand without overlapping the sword/scabbard, which made it even more visually confusing with the guy behind him, too.
Anyway, I do like the look of the illustration, though. Thinking about doing a full page with 3 panels which features him, as the leader of the Bone Breaker Clan, standing before an army of his minions before battle. It would be good to work on representing crowds with depth cues, etc.
Maybe I'll flip the perspective in one of the panels so the viewer is among the minions. Would be a good opportunity to try out doing some silhouettes, which is something else I need to work out.
He does need a name, though. Hmmm . . .
I'd also like to get him into an environment, so maybe he's in the Red Crow Inn, with his pocket Shaman healer, looking for a third (geared DPS) before heading out for a little action. Maybe he could recruit Wormlip? Do you remember her from the Kadis days?
I'd have to remake her as I had a HDD crash back then, though. I think I remember basically how she was made. IIRC, she's pretty much Sachra (g3f), with a partial morph muzzle created from Ogora (g2m). Not sure about the mats, though - think it was a custom skin job, but I can't remember what base I started with.
Urge to play in DS today rather than working rising . . .
- Greg
In my mind, he's a fan of the reverse grip style. :P
I'd LOVE to see a multiple panel sequential page with your NPR style - that would be really cool to see!
And whoa, Wormlip is truly scary! lol Did you use Shape Splitter/X-Morphs for the jaw morph transfer?
Diva - the Partial Morph Sculpting scripts I wrote years ago were used in conjunction with GenX2 to span generations and gender.
Still working on gathering all the figures/props/environments necessary, and running them through the algos, tweaking textures, etc. Here's Wormlip:
Once all of the assets are gathered and prepped, the work can begin on laying out the individual panels. This time spent setting up should be more than worth it when doing a multi-panel sequence, a complete book, or entire series using the same characters.
- Greg
hahah That's too cool! I'm so excited to see your sequential work! Your NPR work is gorgeous so being able to see it in sequential comic book form is going to be so neat! Your algos are perfect for illustrations and comic art!
Thanks, Diva - it has been a long time comin! I'm anxious to put it all together.
Here's another member of the Bone Breaker Clan rendered at a couple of different levels of detail:
- Greg
Ohhhh I dig it! I think I like the second one more - but they're both really cool!
Will you be starting a new thread dedicated to sequential comic pages? Or will you be mainly posting here?
I like the more detailed one better, too, when looking at it on a computer monitor and it gets displayed pixel perfect (no resizing). But have you looked at it on a phone? When it's smaller and being resized, bad things happen to fine lines.
Here's a simple, concrete example illustrating what I'm talking about:
The top row is a cropped portion of the less detailed image, with the original 128x128 pixel version in the middle, and resized versions to either side. The bottom row is the same thing for the more detailed image.
To me, the fine lines do not scale well. I understand that different resizing algorithms have different strengths and weaknesses, but any resizing will still always cause problems. I'm exploring the less detailed style because display on mobile devices has always been a consideration for me.
Consider the simplest case: a 1 pixel wide black line. If you want to scale it down to 50%, how do you do it? Inevitably, it becomes a grey line. Also, how do you scale it up 150%? Same thing happens - the introduction of greys. This has the effect of making lines fatter & fuzzier. It's an unfortunate result of digital sampling and cannot be avoided.
It's worth noting that it's not only scaling down that causes an issue. Scaling up does as well. The fact that increasing resolution (more pixels) can actually hurt image fidelity can be a bit counter intuitive, but true none the less.
- Greg
ETA: I think maybe a new thread for finished comic pages is a good idea - if I ever actually finish some ;)
Oh yeah - I see what you mean. I looked at the thread on my phone and you're right, the first does look a bit better on such a small screen. Are your Algos able to do something that is a little bit in between the two - with the thicker linework of the first image but maybe just a tad more details? Almost like a mix of the two but leaning more toward the first one?
omgosh these are incredible :0 especially the last one. now im in the mood to watch some studio ghibli.
I know right? Greg's stuff is so cool! I come back like every day hoping he's posted something new. lol I love his algos and the cool visuals they create.
absolute magic going on here.
--ms
Thanks @JeremyD - always nice to hear when people enjoy them! I googled Studio Ghibli and found that they've created many animations. I'd like to check some out - do you have any favorites/suggestions?
I don't know about magic, @mindsong - just the result of a process that's been evolving for almost 3 decades now. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to look and comment. It's much appreciated.
Funny you should say that, as what you're describing sounds an awful lot like the process I currently go through. As you know, I save close to 1GB of image data every time I run the algos. This includes multiple styles, intermediate images, different masks generated based on the analysis passes, etc. The table of images below represents just a few of these images:
The left column is low resolution output from the algos, while the right column is higher resolution. This is just one of the many fractal-ish concepts employed by the algos. They're all created based on the same analysis passes, but as you can see, it provides for many variations.
The "Final" images were created from the Alpha (which is simplified and has thicker lines), the Color (which was the "Final" full color output earlier in 2019), and the BW. I also included the Z-Depth and Detail masks as an example of analysis passes and derivative images used in the processing of the final output.
As always, it's a work in progress (I know you know exactly what I mean from comments you've made about your own work).
- Greg
ETA: These images are cropped versions of the Bone Breaker I posted earlier in the thread. They've all been resized to the same small size so they'd be easier to compare. It should be noted that had they been larger versions, it would have substantially changed the look of each. This is an unavoidable consequence of digital sampling and the reason for the discussion about it a few posts back.
Thanks @JeremyD - always nice to hear when people enjoy them! I googled Studio Ghibli and found that they've created many animations. I'd like to check some out - do you have any favorites/suggestions?
So many to list! The most popular is Spirited Away and my personal favorite is Howl's Moving Castle. If you watch them, hopefully they inspire you in some way. Your work has that magical quality!