Anyone ever made a 'hand sketched' animation?

[Brian Smith]

I have a client that wants an animation with a unique look that I've never provided before and was hoping someone else has done something like it before or knows someone who has. The client wants a grayscale animation with a very hand sketched pen and ink look. Real shadows and perhaps GI involved. I'm not sure the 'toon' option will provide the right look although maybe with the right materials it could. The real problem I think I will have is that the client wants animated people and perhaps a fountain. Does anyone know any plugins that might work for this. Thanks.

[edub]

C4D has Sketch & Toon plug-in. It takes a lot of tweaking around with to get an understanding of how to use it to it's full potential.

 

Honestly, I think your client is a bit ambitious for wanting "hand drawn" animated people from a 3d software. I'd be very cautious of committing to this project, if I were you.

[Justin Hunt]

I have seen something similar done by CrystalCG (I thinks the linik is http://www.crystalcg.com). It was for an opening shot. started out as an ink drawing and as the camera panned down looked 2d but then started to move forward, giving a 3D Paralax look. Very effective

 

Would the Sketchup line rendering work?

 

JHV

[Sawyer]

Ernest has done NPR anis. If you have an action saved in PS you can apply that to an image sequence.

[AJLynn]

There's the Pen&Ink shader in Max, but it's pretty slow if you use settings that will make it look decent.

[Sawyer]

http://www.3d-palace.com/xenomorphic/education/doc_watercolour.htm

[Ernest Burden III]

Yeah, I've done that sort of thing.

 

You can go two ways--use something like the C4D Sketch&Toon, or a post-process.

 

S&T can do some astonishing stuff. But its as slow as full GI, sometimes slower. So I've done tests, but never used it on a paying job.

 

Ive done my usual linework in Photoshop as a post effect and layered it over a rendered sequence using After Effects. If you can send me any visuals of what you have in mind I could advise further.

 

One issue to ponder is whether the lines should dance around much. When they don't move they become objects, when they vibrate they are etherial and dynamic but the effect might be seen as distracting or annoying. It's a matter of choosing which you want for the project.

[Ernest Burden III]

I found one of my S&T tests. This is a car model that was a sample, and the clip goes too fast, but the effect is great:

 

http://www.oreally.com/temp/chevylinetest01.mov

 

I still prefer the post method.

[Brian Smith]

Thanks for all the advice. I will have to do some more research now. Ernest, I might have to take you up on the offer of advice after I figure out what road I'm going to take.

[manta]

You might want to look at this :

 

http://www.davidgould.com/Illustrate/IllustrateForMax/Illustrate52.htm

 

and maybe mix it up with AE filters, as for people, couldn't you just use any of the animated 2d people out there i.e. RPC, got3d marlin etc...you might have to do them on a different layer, don't know how the Illustrate plugin will react with them, just use AE filters on them...

[AJLynn]

This thread inspired me to have another look at C4D's Sketch&Toon. I'm impressed - this beats the heck out of the kludges I've had to do recently to get effects like this in Max+mr, renders fast with very little setup time.

 

This is using a modified pencil preset plus AO and shadow. Part of the trick is to get the white of the material from luminance and not use lights or default light, then add in color and key light proportional to decreasing luminance until it balances out. Click for very large version

 

I did another one of a building with some windows, and using compositing tags to control AA by object cut render time way down and faking sky reflection while leaving background white gave a nice effect.

[Ernest Burden III]

The only annoying thing about S&T (besides that it can be slow) is that it will not work with reflections, and (I think, I should doublecheck) transmissives, so having lines visible through glass wouldn't work.

 

But overall, its quite good. So for 'drawing' 3D people in an animation, no problem.

[Brian Smith]

Andrew,

That image is just the look I'm trying to achieve.

 

Ernest/Andrew,

I'm still doing some testing to see what way to go, but would either of you be willing/able to take a Max scene and import it into Cinema and apply the sketch and toon for a fee. I have no idea what time is involved but it would be for 1 minute of animation for a completely created scene.

 

Brian

[Ernest Burden III]

take a Max scene and import it into Cinema and apply the sketch and toon

 

3ds is good for that.

 

First the horse, then the cart--decide what look you are going for.

[Devin Johnston]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Final Renders' Final Toon software, I've used it many times and it always works very well. Render times are very low and the quality is very good, you have the choice of picking many different line types from pencil to marker and the setup time isn't that bad. It will also work with RPC's but I'd render these out in a different pass just to make things a little easier.

[M V]

This animation effect can be achieved using SketchUp and a flight path ruby script. The effect is a very "sketchy" pen and ink look.

[John Dollus]

I agree with Devin on this one. FinalToon has one of the most animation friendly implementations. It is very stable over time compared to the others though I am not familiar with the C4D solution but it looks like it would dance quite a bit with a large outdoor animation.

Regardless of the software solution, you need to plan for your final deliverable. Thin lines with great contrast cause all kinds of flicker issues without decent post work.

[William Alexander]

This is using a modified pencil preset plus AO and shadow. Part of the trick is to get the white of the material from luminance and not use lights or default light, then add in color and key light proportional to decreasing luminance until it balances out. Click for very large version

 

Quincy/Fanneiul hall Market in that render?

[AJLynn]

Quincy Market is there (3 long buildings on the left) but Fanuil Hall is jut outside the area of buildings I used.

[AJLynn]

Question for the Final Toon users. One of the things I like about the C4D Sketch&Toon is that you can combine it with the features of the Advanced Render module to get things like sketch with GI or AO, shadow, shaders etc. I've been experimenting with blends of luminosity, color, lighting, AO and sketch to get grayscale shaded and sketched graphics that come out very nice. Since my office uses Max, can I get the same things to happen using Final Toon? Can it combine with Vray or mental ray? Or work as a package with Final Render Stage 1 (or even Stage 0)?

[Ernest Burden III]

C4D's Sketch&Toon is top-notch. Maybe there are other programs that are as good, but it would be hard to be better. I have not used it much in real work, but that's because it's slow. I know it could be made faster, but I'm always in a hurry and use the tried-and-true post effects I've designed. I think it's my loss to not have invested more time in S&T to get it faster. Of course, I've got a faster computer now, so I should try it again.

 

SketchUp will do great lines, but they will look 'inked'. Most hand-drawn stuff in architecture is done with a pencil (though I've also inked) and with S&T I was able to easily make a very realistic pencil line. The randomness and multi-stroke features are fully controlable, so you can have no wiggle to major dancing. The way the lines are done is quite variable. It can use phong angles, material breaks, etc., so its not just an object outline. Different objects can be given different lineweights, and all of these things can be combined. So the more time you put into learning and programming the effect, the better a result you will get.

 

The dancing/wiggling lines can cause problems in video compression, and can be pure poison on interlaced systems, so test in advance. I had a client do an interlaced transfer of one animation and they said it looked awful, but was fine on progressive. Fortunately I had only promised progressive (they never even mentioened interlaced until after delivery).

 

So the options are there. You just need to decide what you want to do.

[William Alexander]

AJLynn,

 

Have any decent reference pics of Quincy Market int & ext?

 

I understand the focus is to get one app to do everything. Render sketch'd lines as a speperate pass, escpecially for animation, is really the optimum way to go about it. Maximum control in post as many fine adjustments as needed...after the fact. Plus it cuts down on over all render times in many cases, especially in C4D, rendering out lines pass, AO, diffuse, GI & Lighting. My expereince is lumping everythiong together with a toon shader.....exponential render times and you still need to tweak it in post

 

WDA

[jsf]

check this link

 

http://www.cgarchitect.com/vb/13440-charcoal-render.html?highlight=tom+pencil

[AJLynn]

AJLynn,

 

Have any decent reference pics of Quincy Market int & ext?

 

Sorry, I won't have access to my photo archive for a couple weeks and I don't think I have many photos of it anyway. My source for the model files is the incomparable (and recently updated) http://www.cityofboston.gov/bra/BRA_3D_Models/Index.html

[DuskZero]

For combining finalToon with other renderers, your best bet is to render out two passes, one for the toon lines, and one for the GI/AO pass. Layer these up in combustion (or something similar) using multiply and you get to play with it a bit more after the render.

 

IIRC, toon lines will draw direct onto renders from scanline, mr, and Brazil, but not Vray. It is better to combine with the above method, though.

 

finalToon will do a sketchy/hand drawn look - you can add a background papery texture, and you can get it to shade objects using bitmaps of pencil/pen strokes, (see the demo image at turbosquid - http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/309221 ) but this can take a little tweaking to get right. It it also worth mentioning that the wavy noise you can add to lines (which looks great on stills) seems to be calculated in screen space, and can look pretty weird on zooms, where the noise appears to change size compared to the object it is on.

 

Worth a look, though, and since it is a render effect, straight line drawing is very fast.

 

Sam