Comic Life 3 and Daz3d - Is there a Thread
Gemini Queen
Posts: 263
I've been using Comic Life 3 for a little bit, and I love it. However, there doesn't seem to be an "Official Comic Life 3 Forum" on their website, or anywhere for that matter. I might be overlooking it, but I could really use some help with it in conjuction with Daz3d. Is there a forum on here that I'm missing? Or would anyone be kind enough to help me out just a little with some tidbits about the application and using it with Daz? Thanks everybody and enjoy your day!
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Yeah, most of what I've found is very very old stuff, and not real comprehensive. And apparently it's used a lot by teachers, because most of the tutorials I've seen are for teachers making teaching materials. There is the manual that comes with it, but again it's not very comprehensive. And there apparently isn't much active updating, So for me it's been pretty much trial and error to figure things out.
Almost everything in there is fairly self explanatory. But I need a full landscap page to work with. The only "landscape" that I can get is with a small panel when I want to have the full image. Also, I'm trying to import an image to use instead of having to use their layout, so I can just put the text bubbles right on top. I'll keep trying, thanks though.
Maybe ask on r/webcomicchat
This depends in part on how you have the program set up, but:
1) Open Comic Life 3
2) From the Template Chooser, choose "Blank" -- NOT "Blank with Styles", because you don't want to use the layouts.
3) This should open up a page called "Untitled" with all of the balloons at the bottom and so on.
4) Go to File menu > Page Setup. This will bring up the page setup options
5) On that page setup options menu, choose "Orientation: Landscape" from the options. This will turn your page to landscape format. Now you should have a completely blank page where you can drag and drop your image and do whatever you need with balloons and text; you won't be constrained by the templates because you won't be using them.
Hope this helps.
The power of reddit. I was so unaware. As I said, I thought I looked over i, and I was right. Thank you!
You've no idea how much this helped me, and what kind of idiot I feel like right now. Thank you a million.
I briefly tried ComicLife 3 until I discovered that it exports production renders at a diminished resolution than what you import. How has your experience been with maintaining image quality?
there is a decent general comics thread here too
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/36615/comics/p1
I use this software too but it was originaly developed for the Mac. It has alot of bugs, but it is one of the easiest comic creators out there. I also use it frequently, and would like to see it get more attention and a Permanent tread.
Yeah, that's been one of my biggest gripes, though I haven't researched it much. You can specify a user resolution for the pages, so for example you could have your pages as, say, 4k sizes. And when you drag 'n drop your image onto the page you can resize it to fit the 4k size. However I'm not sure if it actually gives you the high resolution. But it sure seems like it tends to knock down the quality of the images.
But yeah, I just set up my own format/template (though I haven't figured out how to use that as the automatic startup file/format), so I just open that and duplicate pages to make sure I maintain the same format with each page.
Anyway, one thing I learned is the most important thing in the entire universe when it comes to Comic Life is the "Inspector" tool (top right). Allows you to configure all kinds of stuff in a small window, including page setup and whether you're using speech or thought balloons and on and on. Very important and useful.
FYI, I configured my pages as 4k (3840 x 2160), then drag 'n dropped my measly 1920 x 1080 image onto the page, scaled it to fit the page, and after exporting it appears the resulting PNG looks fairly identical to the input image. No loss in resolution that I can see.
So maybe we just need to crank up our page dimensions to something larger than the actual image size. Although it seems like any edits at that resolution are slow as molasses at the North Pole in January when it's exceptionally cold. Maybe because this particular comic I'm using has a bunch of pages in it that all got resized to 4k.
Sounds like some tweaking will be necessary.
I'm using Poser, but I guess the process isn't all that different.
I generally render at 2560 x 1440, sometimes bigger if I want the freedom of cropping the image in Comic Life. I export PNG images from CL at 300dpi, which with my page set-up comes out at 2283 x 6533. Then I reduce to 1920 x 5494, which works fine as a JPEG for publishing on-line; if I was producing for print I guess I'd want more resolution, but I'm not aware of any problems scaling the process up.
It seems everyone evolves their own particular workflow over time; unlike @ebergerly I've never used CL's Inspector. :)
I've only used Comic Life in the past for lettering/balloons and it was a while ago, but it worked well. I seem to recall rendering out pages that were around 10,000x10,000 pixels by exporting images at 600dpi and adjusting the page layout accordingly. For example, a 15" x 15" page rendered out at 600dpi would yield a 9000x9000 image.
- Greg
So, I have noticed a pretty big dropoff of the quality of images used in this program, and in my search to how to improve it or replace the program altogether, I came across this thread. I know its old, but has anyone else noticed this or come up with a solution?
Resizing the image to original size has no effect. The final image quality is degraded. All the elements added are sharp and clear, but the original image has a slight blur to it, obliterating fine details and leading to an overall drop in quality. I want to use photoshop or gimp, but making simple word balloons is kind of a chore, as I am not very familiar with them.
Any suggestions?
I thought it was my eyes! Quality of print quality varies if pre-printing text on images - looks better if printed in CL. Also I save out the .pdf files to 300 pix. quality.
Yeah the image quality drops the second you load the image into the program. I notice that there is no option for loading the image at full size right from the start, but, I doubt that will affect the final export. Its downgraded no matter how many dpi you use, jpg png or tiff make no difference, nor does using larger canvas sizes. The instant you drop that image in there, CL applies some sort of process to it that blurs it. Its a huge shame because there is nothing else like it out there, and it is really, really easy to use and has a ton of great features.
It used to give an option to use the picture as the page ... maybe it still does and I simply haven't triggered that response for awhile.
Just now, I load a picture, right-click on picture ... way down at the bottom of the list of options: Resize image to actual size.
If it helps any, nobody has complained that they could't read my tutorials.
I've just been adding in programs to my new laptop which is why I thought it was my eyes. Glad to know it isn't.
In poking around some settings, discovered that the image input was not set to 300 as well. So it is now and yes this makes a difference.
Think this is the "inspector" tab.
I have been using Comic Life 3 for all of my later comics. I also have Clip Studio Paint as well, but I use CL3 more because of its ease of use more so with dragging and dropping images into panels. The one good thing about Comic Life 3 is the built in export to PDF, which makes distributing comics a lot easier.
Changing this setting did nothing for pages already rendered, unfortunately. Not that I noticed, anyway. It still looked slightly blurry. Reflections were still dimmed and skin detail was still completely smudged over too. The options for opening or creating new pages doesn't seem to list that as something you can change, either.
Don't know if you're still lurking here, but it definitely does this. Doesn't matter what you try. Even using a page that can handle larger renders and scaling it to original size gives the same results.
CSP seems to preserve the image completely, but putting elements like speech bubbles and sidebars in can be tedious, and adding text to them is ridiculous. CL3 has exactly what I want and is super easy to use, but I don't think I can sacrifice the image quality, unfortunately.
It's been a fair while I looked at Comic LIfe 3; I did a quick test where I rendred out a simple starship bridge scene in OpenGL at 10000 x 6600. I copied the image and resized it in Affinity Photo from 72 dpi to 600 dpi without having it resample it to maintain integrity (no pixels were changed). I then placed both images on two Comic Life horizontal tabloid pages and sized them to fil lthe pages, then exported the Comic Life pages as 600 DPI png files.
It looks like the image that I'd resized to 600 dpi before placing in Comic Life matches the original render, while the one that was resized in Comic Life does show some slight pixel shift, but not too bad.
The images are zoomed-in on the captain's badge, center of the image.
I think as long as you try to match the size/resolution of your render to the size/resolution of the image you want in Comic Life you shoud be able to do it without significant loss of quality.
Hopefully that helps a bit.
-- Walt Sterdan
I'll give it a shot, thanks! I don't think I want to do 600 dpi renders from CL3 tho as a final page... The file size is 50MB+... but 300 is about 24. Maybe somewhere doesn't have a size limit! :D
Also, one completely insane thing about CL3 is that there doesn't seem to be an option to size your image by pixels. Converting pixels to print size doesn't translate very well to it either. Every guide I've seen has what size a specific pixel count will translate to, but when you fit actual size of the render, its always way bigger...
Well... HUGE MEA CULPA here... Open the inspector or Create a new inspector in the WINDOW dropdown with your image selected, go to the image settings panel, raise the sharpness... OMG it was that simple... I searched for days and days trying to find the answer and nothing told me to just look there... wow...
Appreciate this thread and the people in it! This has been a HUGE improvement!
For certain Comic Life is a great tool for comic creation. I started out with it a few years back and found that it didn't get in the way of telling a satisfying story.
Just as an aside, there is a 3D Comic Book Tips And Pictures thread in the Art Studio forum. People have reported using CL there, along with other related software and techniques. The thread is active; I notice a big jump in the number of views each time somebody posts.
Cheers!
Pretty much why I stayed with CL3, as it may not have everything that Clip Studio Paint can do, but since I mainly do comics CL3 is all I need.
Oh yes, you can add new pages - or delete them. From the side panel.
I just started using Comic Life 3 with my Daz renders, and I love it! I was wondering if anyone else out there who uses it is having problems saving images as PNGs.
Even if I click Instant Alpha, and it shows the background (via red highlight) being removed, when I then save as a PNG and open it in Photoshop, the image has a white background again, though it says it's a PNG file. It's driving me crazy having to fuss with removing the white from strands of hair.
I'm using a PC, btw, and a lot of the Comic Life tutorials seem to be set up for Mac users, but I would think it would be pretty straightforward..
Does anyone have any advice? Much appreciated!