thanks!

It looks like a pencil drawing to me.

That is the nicest line extaction ever. Looks to me like a hand touch up of a photoshop line extraction. Would love to know how it was done.

It is an extraction.  No photshop. No hand touch-up. All done in the machine.

don't keep us in suspense, gt - tell us how ya did it.

Please do!!!

Looks like someone drew the turtle's head and took the mail course.

Whadabout the pirate?  Huh?  Whatabout it? ;P

OT: When I was a wee lad, I actually did the pirate and sent it in.  Never received a response.  Pretty interesting since I had already had about 10 years experience in sketching (pencil, colored pencil, charcoal,  pastels) and painting (watercolor, gauche, oil).  Oh welpers...

There are plugins for Photoshop that can do this. Some deal with the entire image and you get to much detail. Some you can tone down what it tries to convert IE the plugin has more settings and options to control what it converts). I am away from my main cpu and my main bookmarks at a trade show. I use an xtensis plug in (I think that is how it is spelled). No matter which one I have tried to use and I have tried a bunch, you have to go back and do a lot of clean up with the eraser and add lines that where too weak. I lay the converted line drawing as a layer on top of the original to us as a guide during the clean up process.

Well is it an edge shader trick here? Certainly not a sketch render.

Quote - OT: When I was a wee lad, I actually did the pirate and sent it in.  Never received a response.  Pretty interesting since I had already had about 10 years experience in sketching (pencil, colored pencil, charcoal,  pastels) and painting (watercolor, gauche, oil).  Oh welpers...

I did something similar and to my surprise was contacted by whatever art school Charles Schulz (Peanut's cartoonist) graduated from.  They offered me a partial scholarship but it came at a bad time for me as I had taken ill and had to go off work on disability.  

I used to love to draw and sketch.  I would love to be able to transfer that to the computer but I just can't get the hang of a graphic tablet and can't get beyond that disconnected feeling between hand and brain. Using a mouse is ok, but when it comes to holding something like a pen and looking somewhere else my brain just doesn't comprehend that.  I really need one of those computers where you can use a pen on the screen, but that is way out of my budget,  LOL

It was with a product called Autodesk Impression. It is designed as a presentation graphics program for people using CAD programs like Autocad.  It's made by the same people who make 3ds Max.  To get it into Impression took a little doing, and you need access to Autocad too. The poser file was exported to a 3ds file and then imported into Autocad and its .dwg file format.  This was then brought into Impression.  You can then adjust linework and apply all sorts of styles from pencil to marker strokes to watercolor to the imported linework.  The linework is editable and is broken out in layers.  The nice thing is that it can also be saved out as .PSD files for further editing in that program. I think its one of the best line extraction methods I've ever seen.

Quote - I used to love to draw and sketch.  I would love to be able to transfer that to the computer but I just can't get the hang of a graphic tablet and can't get beyond that disconnected feeling between hand and brain. Using a mouse is ok, but when it comes to holding something like a pen and looking somewhere else my brain just doesn't comprehend that.  I really need one of those computers where you can use a pen on the screen, but that is way out of my budget,  LOL

My 'computer guy' mentioned graphic tablets and I told him that I already own one (a Wacom Graphire).  But, as you agree, the disconnect between the hand and the screen doesn't work.  The direct tactile brain->hand->surface experience isn't there.  They do make those laptop-like tablet computers where you can write directly on the screen (for like business meetings and such) but they also tend to be very expensive, again as you note.

3D is great, but wouldn't it be cool to 'draw' your figure and have it 'fleshed out' as 3D.  Yes, there is software that does this (iirc) but not without that tactile experience is it going to happen.

FYI -

This is not quite the same as a line drawing, per se, but can be produced using only Poser (P6).

Use the Cartoon w/Line Display Style.

Go in the Material Room and remove all color from all the different objects.

Change the Background to white and remove all shadows.

This is an UNrendered image.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

P.S. Autodesk Impression is nice, but it should be for ~$500.00, n'est pas?

gt, is it possible in autodesk impression to eliminate the jagged, aliased lines so that it looks less like a machine-made image? some of the characterisitics of excellent human-produced line drawings: bold, confident linework variations in line weight smooth transitions et al.

Quote - 3D is great, but wouldn't it be cool to 'draw' your figure and have it 'fleshed out' as 3D.  Yes, there is software that does this (iirc) but not without that tactile experience is it going to happen.

Well there's some very interesting research going in this field (it's called haptic tech IIRC) Last i heard they had developed a kind of virtual sculpting app in which you could work on a 3d mesh with your hands and your hands would get feedback from the mesh as you would in real life. The apparatus was very bulky and had lots of wires and sensor attached to the hands, but i suppose its only a matter of time before it becomes small/cheap.

There's also this which is sort of a 3D Tablet with feedback as compared to the usual 2D wacoms.

You can do a lot with toon shading but you do need a better system then there is in poser or any of these auto-trace apps/photoshop. (The example is not mine, done by friend in XSI)

And animated

But yes, i agree that it's quite hard to duplicate all the nice parts of hand inking. Most difficult being of course that the computer has no taste and thus doesn't know how to exaggerate and simplify the lines.

Sorry to say, this bums me out.  An extraction method but out of my reach.

I use the old graphic art technique of screening with a blured negative in Photoshop.

I have an algorythm from an old circa 1990 paper in a volume on computer vision that is a shading valey dectector rather than an edge detector. It was developed to transmit video of people speaking with signs for the deaf at 300baud. I have never found any one willing to make a filter from the algorythm for my personal use though. The results of the hardware impementation of the filter shown in the paper was terrific, weighted lines with width variation for contour... the authors were White et al. if I recall.

Me, I just draw the damn things. :)

lol @ Paul ................. good one, I like it !!! .... ;=]

It's the Gordian Knot technique, Doc.  I use it with music, too.  I got sick of trying to replicate a decent bass guitar sound with my recording gear and MIDI setup; it was simpler to buy a bass guitar and play the bloody thing.

Yup, me too ... I kep tryin' ta draw sexy wimmin but never could do it until Poser came along ...

And then ...

YyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaHHHHHHHHHHHHHH !!!

;=]

For a living I used to teach anatomy, drawing, classical painting technique, but then my Parkinson's got the best of me. Disabled I can't hire the models I used to, had to move from where I had friends who were artists and would pose for me. Been trying to recreate the art classroom, art studio and artists models with Poser. Sad I guess. It was more fun hiring dancers to draw. Actually the artists were better models. I can't even use most modeling programs because of trouble with the mouse, that is what is cool about Poser... being able to work by dial. Sliders would be nicer. "+/-" buttons would be even nicer! And no, I am not on public assistance, I live on a trickle of royalty revenue from commercial work I did when I first left teaching and had to take up digital work. I output fake drawings from Poser/Photoshop/ArtRage and paint over them in egg tempera, guoache, and watercolor.

What I miss is this old Mac app I had in the early nineties that did vector art with a raster style interface and had a pattern recognition that filtered out my tremor. I have the install floppies but can't get a Mac to run it on. Man! I wish I could have that app again. They sold the name "SmartSketch" to a prog for doing organizational charts and I think some of the pattern recognition work ended up in Flash. It was such a great application for a crip artist.

BTW, read a thread somewhere here where a guy said he was going to hook up a wooden artist mannikin to capture poses for Poser figures. Funny, huh?

Attached Link: http://www.drgeep.com/history/history.htm

Check the link (above)  to visit him ... and ...

Enjoy your trip down memory lane.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Quote - gt, is it possible in autodesk impression to eliminate the jagged, aliased lines so that it looks less like a machine-made image? some of the characterisitics of excellent human-produced line drawings: bold, confident linework variations in line weight smooth transitions et al.

You have control over the stroke to a point.  You do not have the ability to finely control linework variations like a professional inker might be able to do. The aliasing of the line is  controlable and depending on the type of style you select you' might have a hard time telling it from some other media types.

o.k., thanks. I'll check it out.