nisus

Hi all,

Parallel to the latest poll - http://www.cgarchitect.com/cgi-bin/u...c;f=3;t=000013 - we're diving in NPR inhere, because this is a better place to share tips&techniques.

Back in 1998 I used several filters (charcoal, graphic pen and a few others) with different blending modes and transparant settings on different illliminated levels (shadow - main - highlight) in photoshop.

More recently I fever to combine the highpass (threshold=1) with autolevels, crystallise & multiply BM*, glowing edges and poster edges(+paintdaubs) with several other BM's likes overlay or soft edges.
A nice color effect is to add an adjustment layer (colorize HSL 30/40 50/75 0) with transparency set to 25% on top of your effect.

for animation, I recommend a fps of 12.5 (half of normal video) or even less

But these tips are photoshop only... What else is there to share?

rgds

nisus

*BM: blending mode

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STRAT

we do alot of brochure work in work which contain things like site plans, location plans, sketch schemes etc. most of this is usually a 3d model rendered in plan or evevation form with text and other elements in photoshop added to it. i'll post up a couple of small examples to show what i do in a day or 2 when i get back to work.

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Ernest Burden

[quote]Originally posted by nisus:
[QB]Hi all,
But these tips are photoshop only... What else is there to share?

There are really two approaches. The first is like you describe, where you do regular rendering out of 3D and either run an action on all the frames with Photoshop, or do them as an effect in an animation package. I don't think Premiere can do this, though I haven't become very skilled in it yet, but After Effects probably can.

The other approach is to build a non-photo-realistic environment and render stills or frames out of that. I like the 3D approach because it is more dynamic than 2D filters of frames. But the limitation is that you have scaling of NPR textures as you approach/leave an object, and that has the potential to be distracting. However, you do not get the 'shimmering' that can happen with a filter applied to an animation.

So either method will work, you just have to plan your approach from the start, because they lead you in very different directions with modeling and texturing.

In between these two, I guess, would be 'cartoon' type shaders that produce NPR effects without either special environmental treatments of secondary image processing. There are some fantastic examples being done in commercials, like the ones by Volkswagen. I think we CG artist had better develop these skills fast before we lose the ability to define the genere ourselves. If we don't, Madison Avenue will do it for us.

Ernest Burden III

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Ernest Burden III
AcmeDigital
architectural rendering

STRAT

hi there

as promised, here's an example of NPR stuff i regulaly knock out (hope image works).

This example was drawing up in AutoCAD and exported into photoshop where colours and text etc, were added.

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HeDaCoM

well STRAT... this is not NPR it is photoshop painting. heh

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nisus

indeed

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STRAT

fair point chaps.

i'll look again.

i know what NPR stands for, but how do you define it anyway? until i heard nisus mention it the other day i'd never heard of the term before. did you make this term up? because it's a new one on me. just curious thats all

to me, NPR isn't applying photoshop or paint package filters to a rendered model/image, to me thats the same as painting autocad drawings, but more like applying these filters before the rendering process. ie, cel rendering for example.

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nisus

Hi strat,

I didn't make that term, I just picked it up somewhere a year or more ago... In my database of articles I use the term 'Fine Arts Techniques', which is basicly the same, and not...

(* nisus vs mosquito: 1-0 *)

For me, NPR means simulating Fine Arts techniques... or trying to achieve the look of anything NOT made by a computer-tool... man-made art so to say...

Eventually this idea can be extended to anything that does not look like an ordinary render anymore, whose goal is to similate reality.
So NPR is not necessarly simulating Fine Arts Techniques anymore, but it can be - like my own interest - a kind of generation of computergrain/noise.

Like Ernest mentioned, you can apply these techniques as textures before rendering - everybody knows 'Gas Planet' by Eric Darnel? - or afterwards as filters - remember 'Plugin'?.

(* nisus vs mosquito: 2-0 *)

Although no one was really paying to much attention to those techniques, nowadays it seems to be a real hype... Everyting seems to be NPR...

rgds

nisus

ps: damn mosquitos!

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nisus

Hi all,

After some research - mainly a handful of early siggraph papers - I think there are three ways of NPR.

1) map the fine arts texture to the model
2) render using a npr-renderer (illustrate, animo, penguin, npr1, cartoonreyes, expressive effects, piranesi, finaltoon,... more?)
3) add filters to the rendered image

Of course all these techniques can be combined... but who wants looney soup?

rgds

nisus

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Ernest Burden

[quote]Originally posted by STRAT:
>This example was drawing up in AutoCAD and exported into photoshop where colours and text etc, were added.

Some of my clients do that sort of image a lot, but they often use an AutoCad add-on called M-Color, check it out if that sort of image is something you regularly produce.

What I have started to do to show them other ways of looking at computer-colored plans is to do a plan rendering out of Lightscape, since I usually have built the entire scene. What I do that really works well is send the file into the 'solution' stage and raytrace the image with NO light calcs first. If you set the ambient percentage correctly (for me usually around 15%), you will get a beautiful plan that has lighting variations on pitched roofs (but flat color, no real gradations except for shiny surfaces)and proper shadows from buildings. Because you did not shoot the sunlight, you can do this image very fast.

This file can be printed to scale, or brought into Photoshop to have the Acad linework overlayed, and any areas missing in the model touched up, and if there were not trees in the model, they can be dropped in thenm as well.

My clients often like to hand color plans (through their workforce of low-paid interns who get to work around-the-clock) so they sometimes just use my Lightscape plan as an underlay to get shadows right without having to hand construct them.

Ernest Burden III

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Ernest Burden III
AcmeDigital
architectural rendering