Hi guys, i desperately want to copy this technique over to Softimage: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?162560-Painting-with-Polygons...

It's a great way of getting a "painted surface" on an object without it swimming or flickering like you get when you apply a Photoshop filter or one of the "painterly effects" in the FXTree. I really want to use it for this project : http://kerroperro.deviantart.com/art/Andria-s-Head-309193910 - i got the comp looking just the way i want for stills but as soon as i animate it starts to swim

I'm trying to understand what the blenderguys are talking about but i'm afraid i'm not quite getting it.... I'm currently seeing if i just comp together a buch of displaced renders i will get a similair effect but i would be great in one pass! They say "it can be done in almost any CG package, without any special render code or features specific to non-realistic rendering." and i'm sure it can be done in Softimage - if only i wasn't so dim...

EDIT: ok i found the "origin" of technique and it is very nicely explained in this video:



2nd EDIT: i found other techniques that also seem really great - see below..

I did something like it a while ago:

http://area.autodesk.com/forum/autodesk-softimage/rendering/painting-polygons---recreating-/

(posting under the equally weird username rainyday)

I did my post-edit before i saw your response

Cool thanks rray!! Looks like your compound already does the trick! You have no idea how happy that prospect makes me!

Gonna try it out to-night!

PS: rainyday and r-r-ay are a-ok!

Hi rray i'm not quite getting it to work...



First off the grain: can't seem to get rid of it unless i push the AA sampling way up (>50)

But the thing i really want it to do is affect the shadows, that's the look i'm going for and your images on the AREA seem to have that as well, any idea what i'm doing wrong? Or maybe you have an example scene i can study?

Not to spam but just to show the look i want:



I just want a very subtle watercolor feel that "crackles" the lighting - but also doesn't flicker in animation....

That last picture looks great, not sure why in your render before the inside isn't displaced more. Make sure incidence is at 0, and you'll probably need quite contrasty lighting. I'll look into it some more when I have more time

Btw, for toon shading these are cool: Todd Akita series at youtube

Hi Ray, i hadn't tried it with incidende at 0 for some reasom - must try that...

But just to be really annoying i wonder if you (in your infinte wisdon ) can advise me on this: the LitSphere method

http://andy.moonbase.net/archives/tag/art

http://www.cs.utah.edu/npr/papers/LitSphere_HTML/

I can get some interesting effects using the Gray Ball directly into the material port but i'm wondering how i can make it respond to lights - that should be possible right? Mudbox seems to use this method and you can change the lighting in that? I tried just plugging an incidence into the grayball's multiplier port but that didn't quite do it...

Can you help me out on this?

EDIT: also there are these techniques in this slideshow: http://www.slideshare.net/pakital35
Light Warping and Radiance Scaling - they seem very interesting too... i might have to move or rename this thread to a more generalized quest for NPR..

Oh and yeah i've seen the Tod Akita, the line work in the image i posted is pretty much based of that, great stuff indeed!

EDIT 2: more cool NPR stuff: http://www.valvesoftware.com/publications/2007/NPAR07_IllustrativeRenderingInTeamFortress2.pdf
i understand most of this except "warped diffuse" - looks cool...

Warped diffuse looks like a gradient, where an incident node ( set to lights&180 degree) is plugged into

About the Litsphere, I don't know.. In theory it should be light independent, but maybe in mudbox they're doing something like rotating the sampled sphere around...

You could try this, make 2 grayball shaders, one lit and the other that looks like it's completly in the shadow - then mix those using a lambert/or "half lambert"&gradient as the weight of the mix 2 color node.

It's an interesting subject for sure, did you find something like a gray ball library?