New NPR Software?

[Jeff Mottle]

Found this link today and thought someone might want to give it a try in doing some NPR work. The site does not show any architectural samples, but I saw a few on another site that were quite impressive.

 

http://www.redfieldplugins.com/filterSketchMaster.htm

[Ernest Burden III]

Found this link today and thought someone might want to give it a try in doing some NPR work.

 

There's a whole, huge list of 'filters' for Photoshop on Adobe's user forum. There are dozens of sketch, pen, pastel. etc. filters (actions, mostly) written by users. This site looks like a more serious version of that. Worth a try, anyway.

 

I really think that more thought needs to go into NPR stuff--what is the point, what is it we want to achive with this, other than fooling an average Joe that it was draw or painted. That is not what I am aiming for with my attempts at it, though it may be all I can achieve sometimes. What is it about hand media that is still so attractive in an era of flawless photos and photo-real digtal imaging? It's not JUST the 'vagueness'. What is it?

[bytor]

Ernest,

 

I have heard it called warmth, charm, character, style, etc. - some clients just want it. Your particular "style" is appealing to me as are others that can create a certain feel using digital tools and media. We do a lot of public work where we pretty much throw the digital imaging into the overall price, but I would estimate that nearly half of these clients opt to pay an additional 5k - 8k for one larger "hand finished" rendering that we have mounted and provide to them for their purposes. The funny part is that the guy we use lays out his perspecive backgrounds in Sketchup and does a good portion of his texturing and entourage in photoshop. Unless of course he is required to provide it all as hand work, which comes with a bigger price.

[Tomas]

There's a whole, huge list of 'filters' for Photoshop on Adobe's user forum. There are dozens of sketch, pen, pastel. etc. filters (actions, mostly) written by users. This site looks like a more serious version of that. Worth a try, anyway.

 

I really think that more thought needs to go into NPR stuff--what is the point, what is it we want to achive with this, other than fooling an average Joe that it was draw or painted. That is not what I am aiming for with my attempts at it, though it may be all I can achieve sometimes. What is it about hand media that is still so attractive in an era of flawless photos and photo-real digtal imaging? It's not JUST the 'vagueness'. What is it?

 

IMAGINATION ... something natural deep inside the human brain.

[Ernest Burden III]

IMAGINATION

 

I don't think so.

 

The artist using imagination is not enough, the viewer must be inspired to imagine, also. That rarely works. Too much imagination forced on people shuts them out of the conversation, all they can do is sit back and watch. You, as the artist, must get them involved.

[Susan]

I think there is an "other world" feeling to NPR. There is a degree of separation from our mundane workaday world to something a little finer, more romanticized. It's better than "real". Something of a higher order. No pimples.

 

 

I've often wondered why children are more interested in watching "cartoon" stories than stories with real childern on film. I think that there is a relationship here to why we prefer the hand drawn in visualizations. Real life is right in front of us all the time. Why dwell on it if we can improve on it by removing the flaws, fixing the composition, idealizing the colouring: repeat, make it better and more interesting than the real.

[Iain Denby]

I went to Cyprus recently and in a shopping mall there was a photo booth which produced psuedo 'sketch' results instead of photos EXACTLY like the ones on Jeff's link. Nothing whatsoever to do with imagination!

[Chad Warner]

I really think that more thought needs to go into NPR stuff--what is the point, what is it we want to achive with this, other than fooling an average Joe that it was draw or painted.

While attending architecture school, our department was getting more and more into computers for both drafting and presentation. There were some professors who of course didn't like the "look" of computer generated presentations (which at that point were mainly just plotted out floor plans and elevations.) Our job as students was to figure out the best way to fool these professors into thinking that the plotted prints were actually hand drawn, and we went to great lengths to do this, using the program "squiggle," loading up the old pen plotter with canson paper, etc.

 

The point of my long winded story is this: Here it is 10 years later, and I still have to fool people into thinking that the computer generated stuff that I produce is hand rendered, for whatever reason.

 

I absolutely agree with Ernest that there is something about a hand rendered image that people connect with. I would just think that with the proliferation of computer generated imagery, people wouldn't still think that "Oh, that's a computer generated rendering.....it's Crap!" without ever even looking at it.

[IC]

I think people just like 'art'.

We are instinctively impressed by artists and musicians because they have something that can't be taught (past a certain level anyway).

Nobody else in my family can draw and I quite often sketch my kids as they play. It's not great quality by any standard but anyone in my family who sees it is blown away.

 

The problem with our type of cg is it doesn't look like what laymen regard as art.

[upshot]

I have to agree with many here...

 

Two things I will add from my experiences;

-First, photo realistic renderings tend to draw attention to the flaws in field and the mundane. I'll spend days on a model and the only comments I'll get are reguarding the people or trees I chose to populate a scene. Moreover the insignificant flaws (there are always some) draw more attention than the work as a whole (or the idea).

 

-Second, I've fond that clients can get overly nervious that what they are seeing is "done" as if a rendering represents "reality". They are wow-ed but they also can feel powerless. Even peers in-house tend to act like a rendering is too precious to sketch on or add ideas.

 

To me it's just another rendering, just another concept, just another idea.... So I've been incorporating NPR for all early phases lately. There has been alot less concentration on the technique and more conversation on the content as a result.

[Eric]

There's a whole, huge list of 'filters' for Photoshop on Adobe's user forum. There are dozens of sketch, pen, pastel. etc. filters (actions, mostly) written by users.

Ernest, sorry, but I did a quick search on the Adobe site and wasn't able to find the list of filters on their forum. Do you by chance have a quick link to that list? Thanks!

 

By the way, I've been experimenting with my own set of "Actions" for NPR renderings. Actually, I am doing it all manually since there is a few variables in the process, but here is what I'm getting so far... 2 versions of the design, 2 different views, fairly consistent results (emphasis on fairly consistent).

[Ernest Burden III]

Ernest, sorry, but I did a quick search on the Adobe site and wasn't able to find the list of filters on their forum. Do you by chance have a quick link to that list?

 

I do not. Are you a registered 'member'? There is an area for 'professional users' or some such rot, and it's in there. I will see if I can find it again, along with remember my sign-in.