Nice rendering technique - how was it done?

[Angelo Marasco]

http://sourcesanddesign.com/archives..._awards.html#I

Anyone know how these renderings where made? SmithGroup Phoenix, AZ is the firm credited in the article...

It would be nice to set up a rendering process like this in Max without a while lot of post-processing...

Thanks for any pointers.

Angelo

[Travis Schmiesing]

These are more then likely hand drawn people that are simply mapped to a plane, or outline that is made to always face the camera. It is fairly straight forward, meaning, simple to set up.

Then they are simply positioned manually around the scene depending on the context. In this case, these are definitely rendered into the image.

As a side, always plan on post processing your image. Always. It is nearly impossible to render a perfect image straight out, and often you can save a great deal of time by realizing what is faster done in post process than rendering process.

[Angelo Marasco]

Travis,

Thanks for the rendering of the people insight. It's hard to tell from the small images, but there is a subtle "SketchUp" feel to edges and some of the materials. The end result is nice natural lighting combined with a very slight NPR look.

I'm not sure if that can really be obtained from post processing (without looking like the entire image was run through a Photoshop filter).

Thoughts?

Angelo

[Marco Brunetta]

I've done something like this by combining a regular render, with a finalToon line render in Photoshop. I usually set the line layer to multiply, and then play with the opacity to make it barely visible.

I'll try to dig up some images when I get home.

[Mark Cronin]

These are sketchup people straight from the library (with colour removed).

Its a bit sad that I recognize them!

Maybe they've exported them in shaded mode (no textures) and added transparency in their renderer?

[Jon Rashid]

You could always ink and paint the npcs it works with a texture too. So the detail on the board would be fine but you get the bonus of a hand drawn edge to your board

[Marco Brunetta]

Here's what I was talking about:

Geometry Render:



finalToon Render:



Final Result:

[Angelo Marasco]

Marco,

Thanks for sharing! Nice technique. Does FinalToon provide control over line types? Is there anyway to emphasize depth with the linework?

Have you attempted to do an animation with FinalToon? I'm wondering what the workflow would be, considering you are combining two renderings...

It would be very handy to use this technique early in the design process and focus more on presenting the design (and lighting) vs. tweaking texture maps.

Angelo

[Marco Brunetta]

Yes finalToon has a lot of options that let you control the lines in different way. You can achieve some very nice effects with a little practice.

Check: http://cebas.com/products/products.p...-33-788&PID=37

I've never done much animation with this, and to be honest there are cases where fToon decides to skip lines so it would probably require a bit of post work to get it to work right.

I always use fToon on the early stages, I find that clients can better understand what they are seeing if I add a few lines over the render. Sometimes I take them out as the render gets more detail, some time I leave them and take a more illustration-like path.

[Steve Bell]

I used to do a similar effect for other purposes, but it could be easily adapted. All I used to do was get a photograph of a person and in Illustrator using a stylus I would draw the outlines in, etc.

So for 3D you just save out your work and create an alpha channel. Then it's just putting them in as flat faces in the scene that look at the camera, as was suggested earlier in the thread.