Its open source, located at http://inkulator.sourceforge.net

The program takes a OBJ mesh file and produces a black-and-white render in the style of a graphic-novel (aka comic-book). Its not just another toon shader, but uses a perceptual method of inking the render, so it will look very different from the cartoon render in POSER.

Output is in illustrator (AI) format. I've attached a sample that was converted from AI to gif using Mayura (www.mayura.com). The figure is DAZ3D Vicky2 (low res) and the costume is by the Baron.

Any suggestions/ideas/criticism appreciated!!! TIA

WOW! That looks WONDERFUL! I'm off to read the docs now. WOW!

EDIT: Well, I've downloaded and I'm playing with it, but it crashes with every .obj I try to load. BUT... I haven't done much with it, and I wasn't exporting .obj I was just trying to load random ones. We shall see. This looks very, very promising if I can make it work. ;)

Okay, this is pretty cool. I'm having a little trouble navigating the workspace, but I've only just started. So far, so good!

bonni

Message edited on: 08/18/2004 22:42

This looks incredible. Well done on something so new and different.

elizabyte one of the common problems with this piece of software is the different flavors of OBJ that are out there. I've tested this with exported OBJ from poser, but my importer needs some more work. I've been getting feedback like this elsewhere, and I know of at least one fix that I can add to address some of this. Thanks for being a tester!!

ockham you are the first with a screen shot! SLICK!!! I've am filled with a parents pride, thanks so much!!

Works very neatly, and easy to figure out from the online walkthrough. It would be nice to have a BMP or TIF output, but PSP does claim to handle AI files.

So far bitmap output is what people want most, so I'll try to figure out something. I like to go AI myself and rasterize using mayura (www.mayura.com) $40 nagware that can import AI and export bitmap. The advantage is that you can go to 300 DPI for printing. It should be doing the same thing as PSP. GIMP (www.gimp.org) can do AI to bitmap as well and its free.

dhenton1000 I d/l ed & set up the exe, fired it up & loaded the test.obj file. It locked up my machine so thoroughly (keyboard & mouse too :-) that I had to warm reboot. So after the reboot I tried it again, same result. Any suggestions? System specs: Win 98SE PII 350mz 224mb RAM

The line through the feet you mean. Artifacts can occur if the geometry has certain properties. The mesh has to be a manifold (every triangle touches another triangle) other wise you will see wire frame lines. Inkulator-->AI-->PSP-->JPG is exactly how I envisioned the output to bitmap pipeline. The whole scene thing is fantastic, never occurred to me!! I knew that if I got it out the door it would take on a life of its own. Thanks!!

cooler I had similar problems with a win98 machine. I think (ALAS) that this program won't run on win98. I'm afraid I'll have to give you the "win98 not supported" excuse. Sorry. but thanks for confirming it!

Les (sixus1) said to tell you that he thought that this is a really cool app. :) --Rebekah--

Holey Crap! This takes poser to a new level!

Wow, I am definitely going to try this out. :) Thanks for letting us know, I'll be sure to post any interesting discoveries I may find. ;) SnowS

One suggestion after trying to assemble
an animation:

With complicated scenes, Inkulator seems to
hold something in memory between loads.
It's necessary to restart it for each image,
which seems reasonable. This would be a lot
easier if the camera and ink settings
were maintained in an INI file between uses.
As it stands, the camera can be reloaded
as a SCN, but I don't see a way to save and
reload the ink settings. Overall, I simply LOVE this!!! I've been looking for a way to get this style, for both artistic and scientific purposes. Poser's own sketcher doesn't get anywhere near this effect.

Message edited on: 08/18/2004 23:55

.

Hm, so far I can only get the included sample cube to load, other OBJs crash it immediately. I'm on Win XP Professional, 512 megs RAM. Thanks in advance for any advice, take care. SnowS

Is there a way to export the image directly from the program? I just hit print_screen... Edit: WinXP, Athlon 2400, 1gb DDR RAM and a Ge-Force 4.

Message edited on: 08/19/2004 00:04

BTW, for those who don't have Illustrater or Photoshop, I discovered that you can also open these .ai files in Paint Shop Pro

bookmark

Sorry for the second post, I tried to edit my first one but it was too late. ;) I got it to work with exported Poser objects like Elizabyte said, and it does it's job well! I hope you'll keep .ai as an export file format though, since it's the best way to get the cleanest lines (and easy to reshape them too). :) BMP or TIF would be nice too, but I think making it compatible with more OBJs would be a good next step. Thank you very much for this cool surprise! Take care. SnowS

PC only? This is a win98 box... so I do my art on a Mac.

My biggest suggestion would be to implement some sort of camera controls that are a bit easier to use. I can work this out, but it's a little tricky. Possibly if I was using exported .obj files that were intended for this it would be better, hehehe. Still playing with it. Really, REALLY good start so far. Take my input as input rather than a complaint. I think this could be the coolest thing for Poser (and other 3D apps) since, well, a long time. :) bonni

Message edited on: 08/19/2004 01:25

(Well maybe not really backward...perhapes the number refers to the angle of view,and not the focal length). I should go read the instructions....but that always takes the fun out of things.

This is WAY Cool! I won't claim that I've figured all the cool stuff out yet, but it looks VERY promising!

But it crashes whenever I try to save an Illustrator file. I had to do a screen capture to get this.

-jjsemp

Hey...It does save an image file. I found that it creates a temp folder (C>temp),that saves a TARGA file of the last render. It's called "test.tga",and gets overwritten by the next render,but you can grab it and save somewhere else.

Swamp-- you are right the number is the angle of view bigger the number the bigger the piece of pie (angle) for the camera How in heavens name did you get those paths to work in illustrator? I don't have that program, so its great to see what can be done. You hit the nail on the head, the AI file was chosen TO SMOOTH THE LINES. If you wish to see the current bitmap offering, try some renders and look in your c:temp directory for test.tga. A Bitmap output feature from inkulator really means "rasterize this AI file please." Karen 1473 To get a bitmap output. 1) Get a nice image such as you have (not a self portrait, is it?) 3) Menu File --> Save AI--> mypic.ai 4) Open mypic.ai in Illustrator, Photoshop, PSP,GIMP, Mayura 5) Export as bitmap of your choice Ockham -- I sure hope the ink settings are set in the SCN file!! At least they're supposed to be. I'll take a look. I think you are saying that if you load Mesh A and set camera to Y then load mesh B , camera is going to initial, but should go to Y. I'll look into that too. You are one wild guy. Animation in the inkulator will be quite a trick. I'm not sure that the inkulator is frame coherent. If your object is a flowerpot, and you rotate it in your animation, frame coherence means that your user says "thats the same flowerpot, its just moving around" as opposed to "why is he showing me 32 different flowerpots per second?" elizabyte -- Camera controls have been a request, what is there now is not USER friendly its PROGRAMMER friendly. If you could briefly sketch what would be nice for you I'll see what I can do. I was trying to imitate the POSER way of doing things. I can't thank you enough for your enthusiatic interest!! If I missed anybody, please email me directly at dhenton@users.sourceforge.net, or the email feature here at renderosity.

what is there now is not USER friendly its PROGRAMMER friendly Hehe, I recognized it. My husband's a programmer. ;-) bonni

jjsemp

do you have a c:temp directory on your machine , supposedly, if you don't my program creates it, but maybe you are on a machine that wouldn't have rights to creating directories?

See other posts. To get AI output you must have a c:temp directory. I might change this requirement if it bothers people too much.

BTW thanks for the freak test, I was wondering how this would work with the newer daz stuff.

Message edited on: 08/19/2004 02:28

If you could assign a couple of color attributes you would be pretty much on the way to a Cel Shader or Color Inker (something like what Illustrate! does in MAX). Like maybe at least being able to assign a Grey Scale value also- so with Black, Grey and White you could assign three color values to them. This could be done in "post" also (like Photoshop) but if possible in your application... it would be another leap forward!

Veritas777

Great minds think alike!!!

Color is the BIG thing I'm thinking about for inkulator9200

Here's what I'm thinking.

Build model with a texture, pull colors from texture, overlay with "Inking"

inkulator9500

build model with a texture, pull colors from texture, overlay with ink. User clicks on ink region, sets "inking density" so that color can show thru in ink area. These two approaches should give the results you suggest.

The problem with color and inkulator is this:

Would a color render from inkulator be superior to one from Illustrate! or Brazil?

The only way I can find out is to program it, and then I'll find out that it isn't!!!

But I'm going there anyway....

Thanks!!

Message edited on: 08/19/2004 03:07

There's real potential here.

From the UI point of view, I'd agree with the comments so far - sliders, spinners, etc., would be easier than text boxes. But it's early days yet, and I think this project will generate enough ideas and goodwill to really take off.

Sourceforge is a jungle when it comes to finding projects of relevance to a community such as this one. Does anyone know of any other SF-hosted apps which might interest Poser users?

Success! I've figured out how to save an Illustrator file without crashing.

Here's the Illustrator file exported to a gif in Photoshop.

I figured out why the crashing was happening. Inkulator needs to actually be ON the C: drive for it to save the images properly. I had originally extracted the inkulator.zip file on to another drive and was running it from there. Once I moved the inkulator.exe file to the C: drive, my image saved smoothly.

Thanks, this is a lot of fun.

steerpike--

Gormenghast anyone?

The way I dig up poser stuff from sourceforge is to follow the 3D foundry link and visit every item. It pays off (Art of Illusion for example, a free modeler) but you are right, its a challenge.

jjsemp---

beta tester extraordinary!!!!
a dependency on the C: drive is a true BUG. I'll have the user specify the location for the temp drive and if he hasn't, then he'll get prompted for it before he can save to AI.

Your image shows the effect of using the value of going thru the AI step--before and after!!
It also shows the disadvantage, notice the left eye is now fused together and totally black.

Message edited on: 08/19/2004 03:25

veritas777 thanks for the samples, I couldn't afford the plugins let alone max. I recognize the algorithm being used by illustrate. I even have the original paper. Cast shadows, oh my....

This looks really cool... and when i've had my second... make that third cup of coffee i'm going to have a play with it. (ok, it's just a long winded bookmark) Jack

This looks fantastic. I'll give it a go as soon as I can.

Marking for future reference..... Anyone have any luck at all on a Win98 machine?

This is remarkable. Remarkable.
Gotta find to play with it....
Some nice programming going on here.
This should be in Poser6 :o)

:] Fish

Message edited on: 08/19/2004 05:07

Arrgghhh, wont save as .ai. It just crashes. Any ideas? Jack

Hey! That looks a great tool... I spent several nights some time ago tweaking the material settings in 3d max 2 for achieving a toonish/inked figure result... exactly like this seems to do! I'll give it a try soon and will let you know my results (in a W98 environment, if i can, -note for Redhawk- ). Just a side note from Italy (snickering a lot... btw i first thought it was a joke when i first saw it...) you might consider to rename it... since in italian that name traduces literally (changing the k for a c) to 'ass-f...er' and... hehe... well i don't think i need to add more! ;)

Stemardue Oh thats not good., I was afraid my Italian wasn't good enough. Alas, sourceforge locks the name in. There goes the Italian users. But I hope they understand, after all I am an American, and English should be good enough for everybody So far win98 looks like bust. If you have 2 hours and scroll through this post, you'll see that 2 others (myself also) had no luck. Hope it works for you. lemur01 Someone else had the same problem, caused by installing on a drive other than C: that might apply to you. I will fix this in the next release.

Oh this looks damn cool I wont have time to play with it till this weekend, but I dig it....specially because of the AI output. Please keep us posted when new releases come out...this seems like something I want to keep my eye on. Rawn