Im working on a new project and want to render the charcter as black and white, such as a movie or old photo.

There are a few tricks i like to try one leave her eyes and lips in color. How can i do this do i need to take the texture into photoshop and redo it or what?

if anyone has done a render like this can you please let me know how you did it?

thanks Ps I use poser 6 now :D

Message edited on: 08/31/2005 16:46

Have you tried grayscaling the actual texture maps (well a copy) and then rendering just white or grey lights with no colours ? Or just try greyscaling in your paint package. Then adjusting the brightness, contrast or gamma corection to suit.

The HSV node can desaturate the color (turn it grayscale) like you can do in Photoshop. This method easily lets you, say, make the face grayscale and keep the lips and eyes in color. Connect a HSV node to the diffuse color for your character, plug the character's texture map into the HSV color input and set the saturation to zero (or adjust to taste to vary the effect)

thanks Im not sure where the HSV node is I dont see in poser 6 material room advance setting. can you be more specific, sorry im still learning the new features of poser 6. Also If i try the HSV setting does it matter that the texture is applied normal color before I add it to HSV setting or should I remove it. Thanks again for your help

Sway, thanks for the tip on grayscale thru HSV node. Certainly any bitmapped image can be turned into grayscale in post production very easily by desaturation. Even in animation, entire folders of lossless bitmap images could be batch desaturated. But....what about saving original render time???? Let's say you were doing an animation, wanted the video completely and strictly in grayscale only.....a 'noir' film.....and one of your goals (besides the 'look') was speedy render times due to limited pixel depth in grayscale. Would setting all elements with HSV saturation = 0 result in faster renders???? Or, can you or anyone think of a different approach, with goal to reduce render time on an animation. ::::: Opera :::::

Monochrome film also has certain differences in colour response. Even modern panchromatic films are less sensitive to the red end of the spectrum, while the older films hardly responded at all. So if you want a look more akin to the silent-movie era, you can nearly throw away the red channel of the image. That also led to rather odd-looking make-up styles. For rendering speed, altering a texture in the shader tree is going to slow things down. You need to pre-process the texture maps as much as possible. Photographers routinely used filters to cut back on blue light, but you wouldn't really need to do this in Poser, since you don't have the extra sensitivity. White clouds against blue sky would vanish without this being done. Bearing all that in mind, have a look at some movies from the time you want to copy.

You said, "leave her eyes and lips in color". This is pretty easy to do in Photoshop. Bring the render into Photoshop. Do whatever postwork you want to fix joints, correct stuff, etc. etc. Duplicate the corrected image on a new layer. Duplicate it again. Make the top layer invisible for the time being. Select the lower duplicate layer. Go to Image: Adjustments: Channel Mixer. Put a tick in the box that says "Monochrome". Tweak the channels until it looks the way you like. Go back to the second dupliated channel and make it visible. Go to Layer: Layer Mask: Hide All. The color image will disappear with the mask. Make sure the mask is selected on the layer and select a brush that suits you (I would use a medium-hard brush at 100% opacity for this, size depending on what area I'm working on). Paint the mask (white to show the color, black to hide it) until only the lips and eyes have color. You can adjust the opacity if you like to play down the color somewhat, as well. Select All, go to the bottom layer and make it active. Edit: Copy Merged. Then go to the top layer and select it, and paste the merged layers you just copied (Edit: Paste or CTRL-V). Duplicate that layer (just in case you want to go back). On the duplicate layer, you can add noise of various sorts or use the Artistic: Film Grain filter to add a soft, grainy quality. bonni

I found the HSV node its in the math node but I must be doing something wrong it looks like in the material room changes the textures to grey scale but when I render i dont see any change much or the body part turns soild white or black. If someone knows how to do this could you post a screen shot of how you have things set in the material room? thanks

I also tried grey scaling the in photoshop and an applying it in photoshop, and pretty much the same effect. I think it might be treating it as a transparent map cause when I render it as if what ever I have the diffuse color set it seem to be what is showing instead of the texture. Again Im still lost on this thanks to those that have been trying to help me figure this out. :D

Okay, after a couple of test renders I think I got a better result by plugging the characters texture map into the Value input of the HSV node and leaving all the values at 1.0

Here's a picture of the material room setup.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v226/Saturn5/hsv_1.jpg

Your lighting setup will play a crucial role in the final look, of course - I used the Daz Global Outdoor for the test render.

Message edited on: 09/01/2005 22:39

sweet thanks alot sway. I will go play with those setting now that i can see where I made my mistakes. I also tried elizabytes way to by actually changing it it to black and white in photoshop after I render. The only way I havent gotten it to work is by grey scaleling the texture in photoshop before i apply it but your screen shot might have showed me my errors in that too i have to play around with that one more to see what I get. Thank you all so much for teaching me these techniques, now hopefully I can put them to good use and create my my image I have in mind. thank you again.

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=1037962

I posted a render in the Gallery that used this technique (inspired by Sin City)

AntoniaTiger, "Bearing all that in mind, have a look at some movies from the time you want to copy." I am not going for silent-era or 'noir' as much as the scintillating silver-nitrate look of happy 50s movies, such as Roman Holiday and Sabrina. And...in addition to the right "look", my co-equal goal is to pursue render-time advantages because of not having to calculate color I will attempt to apply some of the filtering ideas you provided....once I do move forward I'll probably start a new post with that as topic, hope you will comment! ::::: Opera :::::

Attached Link: http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/robertharris/index.html

There's some interesting stuff at the link about about movies, and why they look as they do. The 1950s are when panchromatic emulsions were the standard, though there are other differences. (My brother tells me that some factories in Eastern Europe and the FSU still turn out that style of emulsion.) There are things like the grain size and the thickness of the emulsion layer which affect the look of the final image. There's also aspects of the film processing which can do a chemical edge enhancement. The other thing to remember is that the cinematographers went to a lot of trouble over the lighting and such things as depth of field. There's more than film that gives those movies the visual feel that they have.

Attached Link: http://www.optikvervelabs.com/

Don't know if it would be useful but there's a free plugin called Virtual Photographer that has settings for adjusting film type and speed etc. and a host of different effects several of which are duotone/BW style.

interesting, lmckenzie. Naturally, they are coming from a "still" perspective, whereas I am an animator. However, I always render out to individual frames, and can easily run batch processes or macros, and those plugins might be of use. Also, of course, I can run batches against effects in Photoshop, etc., the first of which anyone wishing to make a b/w film is "desaturate." Thanks for the link. And thanks for the running commmentary Antonia. The conceptual application of old-school filmatic technique and look to purely digital animation is provacative. I want to learn how to achieve effects before render as well as after, if there is any hope of reducing render time as a bonus to the visual impact of going b/w. ::::: Opera :::::

Attached Link: http://www.johndesq.com/WestonMaster/manual.htm

You might find this of interest. The original Weston meter, and some similar designs set up for cinematic use, is what made the visual look possible.

And both Sin City and Sky Captain... seem relevant examples.

Message edited on: 09/04/2005 14:20

For animation, you should look at the Old Cinema filter for VirtualDub. I don't know if it will give the exact effect you want (it may be too old cinema) but it has a lot of options. http://www.compression.ru/video/old_cinema/index_en.html

Hi lmckenzie, i see where you are going with that...but I am not trying to recreate the look of spotted or noise-afflicted old footage with roller lines, etc., ...but the opposite: High-concept B/W look, like back in the late 50s and early 60s, when they COULD have shot in color, but chose to shoot in B/W instead. Like High Noon, Sabrina, Roman Holiday, On The Beach, Fail Safe, etc., a very long list. Antonia...."And both Sin City and Sky Captain... seem relevant examples." Yes, this is the right direction, though I have not seen Sin City yet. ::::: Opera :::::

Yeah, I figured it was too 'Old School' for what you wanted. More suitable for Chaplin or 40's stag reels. Virtual Photographer is probably more likely to fit.