RENAMED: NPR techniques in Softimage

[Kerro Perro]

Just wanted to add this game as an example of cool NPR:



Now i think this is purely done through texture maps and slightly "glowy" post effect... correct me if i'm wrong ;)

@ Mattheus: on second reading i am intrigued by your ICE idea, when say many polygons you still mean on a single mesh right? Afaik you can't apply ICE on a group or anything, i got this add-on (by luceric?) last year that could apply an ICEop to multiple objects though...

And when you say neighbor you mean another mesh? Sorry i'm really crap at this stuff...

(mods: the emoticons are acting weird! )

[Mathaeus]

Just wanted to add this game as an example of cool NPR:
@ Mattheus: on second reading i am intrigued by your ICE idea, when say many polygons you still mean on a single mesh right? Afaik you can't apply ICE on a group or anything, i got this add-on (by luceric?) last year that could apply an ICEop to multiple objects though...

one ICE tree on one mesh, but I think you can forget this one - effect is similar to what mi_fast subsurface is doing, if it outputs only the raw front scattering, ... something like that.

Now seriously, I think you expect a bit too much from this "polygon painted" teapot. I'd believe it's better strategy to output something like pure incidence render from SI, normals render, AO render, outline render, so on, then try to do the best in post, driving the effects in post with those renders.
At least, long time ago, one fellow programmer and me, we spent a lot of time trying to get some kind of look, similar to game you showed. Finally it was mainly a post-process trickery, with only difference that this one was built in game engine.

[Kerro Perro]

Now seriously, I think you expect a bit too much from this "polygon painted" teapot.

Lol well put! Yeah i had already given up on the "painted polygons" because it was too course and quite expensive, that's why i renamed the thread: more of a general exploration of NPR techniques.

But at the moment i'm a bit (hyper)focused on getting the look of my project right to really do a thread like that... I think when get a little more settled i'll make a nice thread collecting all the Softimage NPR options i can find, it's a subject i've very been interested in since about 2001 with the Animatrix and Michael Arias' work.

For now though just to obsess (or learn) a little more: what could you use a normals render for? I imagine some kind of post-effect but i can't think what... and would you be able to do it in the FxTree or After Effects? That and Toxik/Composite are my only options..

Also i'm still curious about texture mapping multiple objects without merging them, i had some interesting succes with using camera mapping on a group - i could even freeze it but of course there was the stretching > wich is why i made a post about getting this to work: http://www.softimageblog.com/archives/225

I know, i know, i'm all over the shop but i'm getting close now so any hints are very welcome!

[rray]

Cool that you're also trying some of this stuff - if the Painting with ICE and your texture instancer are any indication you will soon come up with a kick-ass NPR shader!

I wish hehe NPR as a subject is certainly intriguing. I was doing some experiments with texture instancing to produce the flake effekt like in the car shader. It worked pretty well, atm I'm thinking there might at least be a chance to get a painterly effect alone by using a very carefully designed bump/normal map.

That's one funky model there, seems fun to animate with - i like the "banding" on the shading on the neck - gradient?

)) Yes that's the Valve Half Lambert+Gradient thing with shadows added on top.

I do have a method now: render map the lit sphere/grayball result and use those textures to get the desired result. Have tried that a little already and see some progress, plugging the rendermapped texture in the bump is somewhat interesting. But i could also just use it as a texture - although then it looks a little Clone Wars and i hate that show ;-)

interesting approach. I thought baking the grayball effect would produce too much stretching when the model moves, but being baked it could be of course edited away in PS.

Anyhoo there is a drawback and that is that i would have to rendermap every single object in the scene, if i have to i will but lemme check if there's another way: Is there a way to "freeze" the lit sphere? I realize it can't be done with grayball applied directly to the meshes but you said something about the enviroment sphere moving in sync > can i set up an sphere say around my character and then sample that back?

freezing probably won't work because it's not tied to UVs that could be frozen. It needs eyeray and normal vector, which could be stored and reappied. But for that you'd need baking again.

[Kerro Perro]

I wish hehe NPR as a subject is certainly intriguing. I was doing some experiments with texture instancing to produce the flake effekt like in the car shader. It worked pretty well, atm I'm thinking there might at least be a chance to get a painterly effect alone by using a very carefully designed bump/normal map.

Oh yeah i saw your thread on that a couple of days ago and tried to see what would happen if i just played with the mib_bump_flakes node - but things are never that easy ;)

Well from my little test you can indeed get a sort thick oil paint/acryl effect with bump, like you say as long as the map is well thought out. Very curious to see what you (eventually ;) ) come up with!

interesting approach. I thought baking the grayball effect would produce too much stretching when the model moves, but being baked it could be of course edited away in PS.

Well no need really, it doesn't stretch away from the camera like a normal camera projection:

collar.png

(don't mind the blue splat - was a mistake in the painted lit sphere)

That's what's a little frustrating to me: it seem a perfect way to very easily texture a whole group with no projections whatsoever you just can't make it static... Maybe you can do something similiar in post with a normal or uv render?

Anyhoo as for the "shadow crackling" i had a little progress:

Capture2.PNG

Just "extracted" the shadows in AE (dirty hack but just for a quick test, i might try matte shadow later) and overlayed a texture, rough test but it's in the right direction.

The main thing seems to be - and i think you came to a similiar conclusion - a well placed texture for the effects.

For now i think i'll just stop looking for a "magic bulllet" and just paint on a nice texture on this character in Mudbox. But later on for things like backgrounds i think your texture instancer or camera projections might work out well too.

[druitre]

Interesting thread!

I went over to Andy Moorer's site and installed his litspheres realtime shader - cool. I'm seeing a difference though between the realtime output and the mip_Gray_Ball shader rendered output - looks like it's using a different vector (?). Can anyone point me to how to correct that so that realtime output matches the render (the latter is more accurate to the litsphere image, with the highlight/lightdirection in the correct angle). [edit: it's flipped vertically in the realtime shader]

Also, the .fx file he created works if I put it in the factory install with the other .fx files (C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Softimage 2013 SP1\Application\phenolib\hlsl) but not if I put it in my workgroup. [edit: nevermind, I figured it out - have to create a directory 'hlsl' in the 'application' folder of the workgroup and put it in there]

cheers,
Jasper

[Kerro Perro]

I don't know Jasper, i haven't tried it out as the grayball renders so fast in the render region anyway.

If you manage to work out how it gets and converts it's vectors lemme know, i'd love to "abuse" this shader ;)

[druitre]

Yes, I was mainly trying to get it to work in realtime to have a Zbrush-like modeling experience. Sort of. In DirectX though, I don't see any wireframes so that's a bit of another problem I'd have to solve first...

[edit: I solved the flipped Y vector. Opened up the .fx file in notepad and edited out a line that looked suspicious:

Code: Select all

 // Swap it around a bit... 
	worldNorm.y = - worldNorm.y;

Works correct now! Looks like Maya has it's Y inverted]

[Kerro Perro]

Maya has everything inverted

(i know that doesn't make sense but i think it sounds funny!)

[Kerro Perro]

Well i've got a look i can live with, but it's a little different: i've just painted a well... painted texture that gives a nice look imo, given up on the "crackled" shadows but am not quite satisfied with the lighting yet. Once i can get that Maxwell license bought i might do some more fiddling with that.

Btw i only applied the texture to the face, the plan is to "hand paint" the big parts and create some subtle texture for smaller parts:

[Kerro Perro]

In case anyone subscribed to this is curious i made a WIP thread of the project: viewtopic.php?f=24&t=2557 where you can see how "solved" the painted look problem.

Maybe i should also make a proper "NPR in Softimage" thread that is a more general collection of the different techniques available?