Revisting Carrara's powerful NPR renderer

Headwax

 

Just experimenting with custom brushes.

These images are two NPR renders combined with toon pro outlines.

Thought they might help stir interest once again in this powerful part of Carrara.

I used them as an overlay in a coloured image later - works good. Will post that later

 

 

Headwax

you can see how it works with this photodonut filter if you click on the image to make it big

 

 

Bunyip02

Looking great, I often use Toon! part III, GMIC, and Toon Pro as part of the NPR process, definately worth a place in the production line !!!

Diomede

I love your NPR images!  Need to revisit. I had begun quite a few experiments that I should update with Philemos plugins for converted hair. 

Headwax

Thanks Diomede - big advantage of the NPR renderer is that you can set it to follow the u v cordinates - so you caould get nice cross hatching that followed contours theoretically

Steve K

Very nice.  Have you tried animating?

0oseven

Impressive

, as is all your work -

Headwax

thanks SteveK and 0oseven :) I had a concerted play with changing the u and v and normal and random parameters - couldnt really see a lot of difference with this example

SteveK it would bery interesting rendering out a few passes as an animation and combing in post - havnt really had any time to do animating though for many years - excapt a Hug Ball homage to William Kentridge last year - was just Toonpro superimposed on an avi of different book pages - i think it's on facebook !

 

Steve K

Headwax_Carrara said:

 

SteveK it would bery interesting rendering out a few passes as an animation and combing in post - havnt really had any time to do animating though for many years - excapt a Hug Ball homage to William Kentridge last year - was just Toonpro superimposed on an avi of different book pages - i think it's on facebook !

I did a quick search and did not find it.  But what I had in mind were the great Oscar nominees over the years in the short animation category.  In particular, the National Film Board of Canada has supported a lot of gems, most of which are very creative in the imaging (see, e.g, "Syrinx"):

https://www.nfb.ca/channels/Animation/

 

Headwax

thanks fo that link will have a gander when get home :)

here is a link to that video - hopefully it will work - nothing groundbreaking but if you Kentridghe's work you can see the fun  part!

https://www.facebook.com/andrew.finnie.artist/videos/10214052512896567/

Bunyip02

Headwax_Carrara said:

thanks fo that link will have a gander when get home :)

here is a link to that video - hopefully it will work - nothing groundbreaking but if you Kentridghe's work you can see the fun  part!

https://www.facebook.com/andrew.finnie.artist/videos/10214052512896567/

Cool, link worked for me !

Headwax

thanks! :)

Headwax

 

here a few differnt NPR renders with different settings combined (multiply parameter) with an ambient occlison pass and toon pro pass as well

diffuse pas over top and opacity reduced gives colour

 

pdf of thread attached in case image vanishes..

Steve K

Headwax_Carrara said:

thanks fo that link will have a gander when get home :)

here is a link to that video - hopefully it will work - nothing groundbreaking but if you Kentridghe's work you can see the fun  part!

https://www.facebook.com/andrew.finnie.artist/videos/10214052512896567/

Yes, that worked, very nice.

 

Headwax

thanks SteveK :)

Headwax

Bunyip02_Carrara said:

Looking great, I often use Toon! part III, GMIC, and Toon Pro as part of the NPR process, definately worth a place in the production line !!!

big apologies Bunyip02, I did not respond to you post - second one from the top! Gah ! Yes I need to revisit those parts of carrara too !

 

Headwax

native npr very subtle =combined with a few other passes 

like wireframe shadow etc - tonemapped to bring out drama

 

 

 

Dartanbeck

Very cool render, and really cool thread (full of even more really cool renders!)

Yeah, the title of the thread really drew me in here. Even though I've never been patient enough to figure out the settings that work for me, the last few times I've visited the NPR engine I've noticed more about it that I had before. It really has a LOT of settings that lead me to believe that I could really make use of it if I'd only take the time to run a bunch of tests with it - perhaps starting with lower resolutions to get the thing rendering faster?

Man, I love the results you're getting from this!

Dartanbeck

Oh... and Thank You for making this awesome thread! It worked. I'm feeling NPR Inspired again! :)

Cbird

Headwax_Carrara said:

native npr very subtle =combined with a few other passes 

like wireframe shadow etc - tonemapped to bring out drama

 

 

 

The plea to be a real boy breaks my heart in this one.

Headwax

Dartanbeck said:

Oh... and Thank You for making this awesome thread! It worked. I'm feeling NPR Inspired again! :)

 

greetings dart, thanks ! nice to see you.

:)

I made my own stipple brushes that are very light (not many dots)

I run one render with different lengths and widths - brings out the clothes - then reduce the width and length to bring out the fine details - like the eyes

then combine in post

(trick is to keep it simple so parameter choices are reduced = so I don't render the npr with hightlights. shadows and background)

I can bring in the shadows later with a shadow pass in normal photoreal render (shadow pass used very subtly) other thing is an ambient occlusion pass for adding details - I've been using a ao of 30.00 not the .08 that it comes in with

 

photodonut gas a great filter 'blur while keeping edges " works terrific on a wireframe and would well with these will have a go and see

 

looking forward to seeing what you come up with~!

 

 

 

 

Headwax

Cbird said:

Headwax_Carrara said:

native npr very subtle =combined with a few other passes 

like wireframe shadow etc - tonemapped to bring out drama

 

 

 

thanks CBird :) yes it helps to put ourselves in other people's shoes !

Cbird said:

The plea to be a real boy breaks my heart in this one.

 

Dartanbeck

Headwax_Carrara said:

Dartanbeck said:

Oh... and Thank You for making this awesome thread! It worked. I'm feeling NPR Inspired again! :)

 

greetings dart, thanks ! nice to see you.

:)

I made my own stipple brushes that are very light (not many dots)

I run one render with different lengths and widths - brings out the clothes - then reduce the width and length to bring out the fine details - like the eyes

then combine in post

(trick is to keep it simple so parameter choices are reduced = so I don't render the npr with hightlights. shadows and background)

I can bring in the shadows later with a shadow pass in normal photoreal render (shadow pass used very subtly) other thing is an ambient occlusion pass for adding details - I've been using a ao of 30.00 not the .08 that it comes in with

 

photodonut gas a great filter 'blur while keeping edges " works terrific on a wireframe and would well with these will have a go and see

 

looking forward to seeing what you come up with~!

 

Wow, thanks! You've just unlocked the puzzle box for me! I always mess aroung with too many settings - I see that now, after reading this above quote.

Compositing is such a wonderful thing, too! I used to always try to avoid it. Remember? Not that long ago, actually.

Now I fing that, by thinking through how I want to composite, I can actually do things a LOT faster! I've not tried that philosophy in NPR yet though. So cool!

I also really wish that Draft rendering could be done via multi-cores :(

Vyusur

Here is my two cents to the topic:

Headwax

thank you Veronika - your two cents is very welcome :) - beautiful and joyous those colours

Vyusur

Thank you Andrew! I like your Pinocchio (aka Buratino). I attached one Buratino example. How do you upload your custom brushes?

Diomede

Stunning architectural renders, Veronika!

Beautiful characters, Andrew.  

 

My only current contribution is to make sure that NPR-render-engine newbies are aware that the mesh density of objects in an NPR scene affects the render.  Here, I inserted a simple vertex cube and duplicated it.  The mushy-looking cube is just one polygon per face.  The sharper looking cube has a higher mesh density because I subdivided mid-edge to center several times.  The NPR settings include the default brush for diffuse, shadow, etc., but no outline.  I did reduce randomness and minimum brush size.  The UV maps and the shaders for the cubes are the same.

WendyLuvsCatz

well that is interesting information 

Dartanbeck

Vyusur said:

How do you upload your custom brushes?

If it's an accepted image format, we can just upload it as an attachment. Otherwise add it to a .zip file and attach that - though I've never actually got that option to work for me. I wonder if it was just my internet or something?

Dartanbeck

Very cool stuff, by the way! 

Vyusur

Diomede_Carrara said:

Stunning architectural renders, Veronika!

Beautiful characters, Andrew.  

 

My only current contribution is to make sure that NPR-render-engine newbies are aware that the mesh density of objects in an NPR scene affects the render.  Here, I inserted a simple vertex cube and duplicated it.  The mushy-looking cube is just one polygon per face.  The sharper looking cube has a higher mesh density because I subdivided mid-edge to center several times.  The NPR settings include the default brush for diffuse, shadow, etc., but no outline.  I did reduce randomness and minimum brush size.  The UV maps and the shaders for the cubes are the same.

Thank you, Ted! Your info is very useful.

 

Thank you, Dart! I ment uploading custom brushes to Carrara for NPR, not to forum thread.