Ya see Poser realistic renders.
Ya See Poser comic renders.

Why do you never see Poser Renders that look like Paintings ?

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=465795&user_id=117649&page=4&member&np

Most of my stuff is done in Vue these days, but I have this Poser render from earlier this year. It's definitley not comic or realism. Those kinds of renders are out there, a lot of them.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2331065&user_id=295818&np&np

I like the style of ya render.
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres painting look very realistic.
He's to good.

Not nessasry as realistic as Ingres.
Maybe something more a long the line of boris vallejo.

So it looks like a painting.

zBrush, a lot suggest Intuos5 touch.
All I know is just keep at it till ya got it.
zBrush differently not made for a mouse.

Quote - Most of my stuff is done in Vue these days, but I have this Poser render from earlier this year. It's definitley not comic or realism. Those kinds of renders are out there, a lot of them.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2331065&user_id=295818&np&np

I like ya Render ,bet Luis Royo would to.
Do you know with shaders or some thing how to make it render so it would have that painted look.
like Luis Royo ?

Maybe something more a long the line of boris vallejo.

Ahhh,,, now I really understand. Earlier versions of Poser did a great job with that kind of light. It was kind of a staged scene with the voluptuous maiden in heaps of trouble... Good stuff. I did a few but they are gone. I thought there was a lot of that. Maybe it has past a bit.

My turkish bath was just a weird study using Poser... I do enjoy that. Especially with 512 megs of ram back then...;)

No, you simply have to learn how to paint over your renders if you want that look. That and modeling are on my to do list for this year. When I can find the time, of course.

My most-commented and most-favourited gallery picture: Missing (opens in a new tab or window)

One of my favourite artists: beton (nudity) (opens in a new tab or window)

I wonder if it's possible for shaders to create a painterly look.  There are toon shaders and shaders that create a pencil/charcoal look. 

I suppose just using a Photoshop filter in post would be easier, but still...

I saw some posts a while back from someone who was working on a painting plug-in, in which the brush strokes would depend on the orientation of the 3D mesh surfaces - but I don't recall seeing anything on that subject recently.

My most-commented and most-favourited gallery picture: Missing

Nice one EnglishBob,,, that hits the Ops question and really turned out nice. Perhaps the realism thing has run its course in Poser for a while. I do enjoy images like this one.

I think that kind of thing is just easier in postwork, either in photoshop or with something like Postworkshop or Photosketch. I think it's noble to try to achieve it all within the renderer, but kinda masochistic at the same time - I'd say the image you want is the important thing, use any means to achieve it, why limit yourself?

I did this one, Huntress,  in Postworkshop, it has a node-based interface a lot like the material room. The render was from modo, not poser, but the process would be the same.

I also have a watercolour version of the same image, I'll post it here if you're interested.

Postworkshop is pretty powerful but I really like the hand-paint function in Photosketch. You can run a filter over the whole image to get almost there, then change the settings on the filter and re-paint over specific areas until you get exactly what you want, so it's quick but also very flexible.

I use postworkshop 3 to modify renders (and photos for that matter) with a painting effect for printing on canvas.  The results can be stunning.  PWS 3 has many, many filters to simulate the look of different painting, drawing and other media.  The new interface took some getting used to, but it's a lot of fun.

If you really want to get under the food, there is a node GUI allowing you to modify and create your own filters.

They have a free demo with limited number of filters, but it lets you play around and see if you like it.

I find it immensely easier than Photoshop and I have never been able to approach the same results with art filters in any Photo Editor.

Klebnor

I liked the way this one turned out so I turned it into my avatar.

Love this topic. Nice examples posted here - ambitious and well executed.

Funny cos I'm putting together a render along these lines right now. The reference is quite painterly (in terms of having lots of brush-strokes), but I'm letting Poser do it's thing to an extent with lighting and some degree of realistic shaders. I'm looking for a re-interpretation rather than an emulation of a painting. If I get it finished in the next couple of days I'll post the results and see if anyone can identify the source.

 As this thread shows, there are actually quite a lot. For myself, I generally aim for a natural media look to my images. There are three routes - shaders (such as those sold at RDNA - not cheap but worth is and on sale every now and then), filters (such as photoshop filters or stand alone programs such as Postworkshop Pro), and over painting (I still use my old Painter IX.5 which I can't afford to upgrade, but these days I think that ArtRage is a viable alternative to do the job).

This was an attempt at overpainting...

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=1622488&user_id=221587&np&np

This was an early experiment with the Virtual Painter Plug In...

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=859523&user_id=221587&np&np 

And some of my own styles for PostWorkShop...

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2029931&user_id=221587&np&np

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2099480&user_id=221587&np&np

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2102465&user_id=221587&np&np 

Personally, I think that Poser renders lend to this kind of postwork far better than photographs - thanks to what gives rise to the uncanny valley in efforts at photorealism. The trouble with useing a photograph is that it is just too acurate an image and that can limit the illusion but the 3D models that we use, however good they are, don't quite manage that and those little failings help to create the illusion of a drawn/painted image.  

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=859523&user_id=221587&np&np

Allow me to bring your attention to my friend Brian Haberlin's book, Anomaly. It was created with Poser/Daz content and postworked by Brain. The art is awesome and has a very painted feel to it.

You could simply use a lens with a fbm node to simulate short strokes:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2754029

I will test it out to see if it works and get back to y'all... :)

Attached Link: Anomaly

http://www.experienceanomaly.com/gallery/

Ditto to Postworkshop. I think it would probably be more trouble than it was worth to try to accomplish that within Poser itself.

I did this book cover with a relatively simple render + Postworkshop. I selected it out of dozens of styles I applied to the same image in Postworkshop. Can't imagine doing that many renders even if Poser had the capability.

philebus:

I really like the three koi portraits.

How did you create the three different paper styles for the fish?

Klebnor

Quote - philebus:

I really like the three koi portraits.

How did you create the three different paper styles for the fish?

Klebnor

It's been a while since I made those styles, took a bit of trial and error and a whole bunch of nodes. You start to get a feel of how to get different effects by playing around with the various building blocks. All three of those styles and one other are in my freestuff should you want to use them.

If we made a skin texture that was painted in the style of painters,like Boris ,Royo etc etc.
Had a painted sky background.
Had painted textured buildings.
Wouldn't that make the render look painted ?
Wouldn't that work ?

I tried do that before, never seemed to catch on. Painted skin textures that is. I still use them for my own stuff but ...

Quote - If we made a skin texture that was painted in the style of painters,like Boris ,Royo etc etc.
Had a painted sky background.
Had painted textured buildings.
Wouldn't that make the render look painted ?
Wouldn't that work ?

I don't think that the render would look painted, just the figure. However, that method has some potential for surreal effect - check out the film Mirrormask. I remember Dave McKean giving a talk about it at the showing I went to in Brighton - he painted the textures that were used on the 3D creatures in the film.

Good question - it's something I personally am always striving for, and the more my renders look like paintings, the happier I am! 

What makes a painting look like a painting is pretty subjective, though and there's probably as many different answers to that question as there are people on the planet!  For me the key is the lighting (as ever) and the composition/camera angle.  Nowadays it's pretty easy to get lighting that looks like a photo but to get the lighting that I consider to be reminiscent of a painting takes a bit more work.  Probably more contrasty and dramatic than someone who is going for a photo-realistic appearance would be happy with, with stronger colours from a similar palette.  If you study great, dramatic painters you'll see that they tend to restrict themselves to a limited palette of colours in a picture, too, so that's soemting else to aim for.

Postwork, ah, postwork, the elephant in the room.  My attitude is - "why not?" So I do.  The image on the left is a raw Poser render that I think is pretty painterly in tone, colour range and composition, but it can certainly benefit from some postwork, as on the right.  I find that a basic render is just too clean-cut to look like a painting, so you can rough it up, plus you can also take away unwanted, distracting detail.  Look at Frank Frazetta's work - one of his key signatures is his ability to sacrifice minute detail where it's not needed and concentrate his effort and the attention of the viewer on the bits that are important.  That's tricky to pull off in CG without post, but is a dead giveawy (to me) that you're not looking at a painting.  You can use lighting to highlight key areas and mask others, but sometimes postwork is both quicker and more effective. 

As ever with CG and the Internet, everyone has their own answer; I know what works for me. 

I think this is a really good thread, creative, informative and adult!

Frank Frazetta is a killer Artist.

Like your attitude of why not.
I'll use what ever gets me there.

Your "Rain Falls Up" has a cool look to it.

When I render I'll turn one light up high and have a hot spot light.
Mask off parts.
Have a couple layers of splattered colors.
Turn the intensity up.
Topaz Labs have some cool filters.
I've tryed a lot of different tools.

Attached Link: My Poser interpretation of a well known artists painting

Hah! I said Ed Hopper without ever seeing 11AM before in my life so you are onto his style more than you think. I did look it up and this is so close... excellent

Quote - Hah! I said Ed Hopper without ever seeing 11AM before in my life so you are onto his style more than you think. I did look it up and this is so close... excellent

I felt duty bound to try and do this one justice - glad you like. Must attempt a higher res version some time

wow,  nice hopper interpretation!... one of my favorite painters, actually. I enjoy Hopper's voyeuristic "Rear Window" style paintings the most. Really artistic use of poser in this thread, refreshing.

Edward Hopper would like your render.

Quote - Here's one I created a while back using Photoshop.

Cool render ,I really like the glow.
I think it's the smallest of details that makes the biggest Art.

That's one of the things that I really like about Frazetta paintings, how he distills an image down to it's viceral elements (one way of putting it I guess). He could paint a necklace of bones swinging around a warriors neck without  actually painting any connective details and it would just look perfect, it probably wouldn't have looked as dynamic any other way.

Frazetta painted in a very small scale on, IIRC, the reverse side of unsanded masonite panals. Hence the tactile quality of the grain showing in his imagery and his excellent utilization of dry brush techniques.

That's pretty darned near to getting the look of frazetta's brush-work, Paul. the axe in particular.

Wonder if there are any Richard Corben fans using poser? Would seem like a perfect match.

See, back in the day before digital when I had pretentions about being an 'A'rtist I was very much a believer in using the appropriate form to convey the idea. If the ideas called for a painting you used paint, if a photograph you'd pull out the camera etc. I still believe in this approach to a degree even now, but it was a much more tactile world back then. When you went to see an exhibition of paintings or drawings you wanted to see the brush-work, the subtle nuances & blending skill, the application of detail. Artwork had a 'body', and the hand of the artist was part of the joy of making the effort.

Digital threw a lot of that thinking up in the air, in some ways good and others not so good IMO. What was and is of promise is the sheer potential of an artist's reach in terms of audience, not unlike the advent of printing way back in history. There's also a sense of democratisation of the means of production for those visual ideas, meaning that we now have the contributions of a great many more obscure creative minds than ever before rather than the condensed authority of the officially sanctioned few.

What isn't so good from my point of view is that people's choice of medium (or emulated medium) often seems arbitrary to me these days. I get that many arn't really looking to convey ideas or meaning at all, and thats fine. But from an aesthetic point of view in a digital realm I'm not entirely sure what trying to emulate brush-stokes specifically is really all about. To me brush strokes are a function of the form & activity of painting, an indicator of the economy of the painter's desire to convey an idea quickly, or expressively. In the case of expression brush strokes seem to me intrinsically about the hand of the artist, as much about the quirks of the individual hand as anything else. Digitally emulating them seems pointless, unless digitally painted using a tablet & pen.

(?)

Couldn't have put it better myself Dan, mostly.  I like the response that digital brush strokes evoke in the viewer (mostly me), and they're an ideal medium/tool to employ to rough up areas of an image.  If they also look like real brush strokes, it's a bonus, to me.  Just checked your web site out - very very impressive work you have there.  I did my Foundation Course in Newcastle in 1978; I think Carl Lazzari, one of the lecturers from my later Fine Art degree course in Leicester might have moved on to Newcastle Poly, oops, the University of Northumria....!

I too used to aspire to be the Next Great Artist...!

Quote - Frazetta painted in a very small scale on, IIRC, the reverse side of unsanded masonite panals. Hence the tactile quality of the grain showing in his imagery and his excellent utilization of dry brush techniques. Wonder if there are any Richard Corben fans using poser? Would seem like a perfect match.

When I first got into Frazetta, I used to think Masonite was some wonderous American material specially made for great artists that you couldn't get here in the UK.  Then along came the Internet, and I found out that's it's er, hardboard, the favourite medium of cash-strapped art students throughout the universe!

I never heard of Richard Corben - just looked him up, I really like what I see.  Not going to get much work done today!

...You touch on some interesting points about the digital medium, Carodan. Coming from a traditional medium background I often feel like using pre made content and poser in general is somehow "cheating" or being a, ironically, "poser". Of course my abilities in this medium are way behind what I can do with pen and ink, a brush or some clay. Who knows if they'll ever catch up?

So you don't consider yourself an artist any more or you have no pretentions of being an artist? I'm not really sure I understand your opening statement. You seem to be pretty skilled and have a lot of ideas of a creative nature... doesn't this qualify you as being an "Artist"?

In terms of the 'officially sanctioned few' in the realm of art, I think that concept died out after the renaissance, and certainly upon the advent of modernism.

There are plenty of magnificent painters who's work displays no visible brushstrokes whatsoever, surely they are still painters?

Digitally painted, with, ummm, digital paint. I see. Difficult to say what is a simulation or authentic, to categorize or officially sanction one way or the other with 'CG' techniques.

anyway, just some reactive thoughts

What I think is really cool about Poser is that it lets wild eyed starving artist weirdos try their hand at 3d art, and frankly that's where the interesting art is going to come from... generally not from techs or graduates with demo reels and aspirations for the CG factory.

(primorge's poser mini manifesto)

Didn't know it but at 7 years old I was a Artist didn't know it then ,But I'm a Artist.
Medium has nothing to do with being a Artist.
It's burned in to your soul ,rather you want it there or not,like love.

I might get nostalgic for the old days ,from time to time.

But to do one oil painting at least $200.
cavus ,brushes ,linseed oil ,etc etc.
one tube of red can cost $50.
ya need a lot of space ,hole room.
You get lead poisoning.

Air Brush ya need the airbrush and compressor.there not cheep.
a lot of masking.
alt to have a paint both ,good mask ,well ventilated space.
ya still breath the paint.

So now you have gone threw all that.
Who sees ya Art ?
Can't copy it .
You can give it away to a gallery if they want it.
Some gallerys keep 90% of sells.

CGI is more affordable and a lot safer.
CGI is a better medium ,you have never seen what zBrush has done.
You can show the hole world ya Art :)

Couldn't agree with you more, Rorrkonn. Cg is definitely more practical in terms of space considerations... I wouldn't be able to indulge in my little artistic distractions if not for it! (alas, no viable studio space at the moment). I also agree about the dangers of poisoning from heavy metals inherent in some mediums, I did a stint as the lead tile glazer at Heath Ceramics. You think a little oil paint is bad, try standing in a spray booth 8 hours a day spraying 700-800 square feet of architectural tile with lead and cadmium based glazes... Only a complete dinosaur would argue the merits of the medium.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a better medium than any particular other (except perhaps Basket Weaving)... that would be a little narrow minded or snobbish, don't you think?

I've never suffered a gallery that took more than 50% (which is bad enough as an emerging artist) cut on a final sale, either. You must have had some bad luck in that regard.

I've seen what ZBrush can do... I've have it (have for a while), use it all the time in my projects, and visit ZBrush Central regularly.

The minor critique I have of Cg is that you can't really hold it in your hand or indulge in the pleasures of commodity fetishism that comes from Objets D'Art. And no, 3d printing aint the same.

Well enough of that... Back to the excellent original topic.

Paul - thanks man. Didn't come across Carl Lazzari, but I wasn't there until '90. Heh, they were going to call it City University of Newcastle upon Tyne, until someone pointed out what the acronym would be.

Primorge - Artist is one of those subjective terms, and although i wouldnt claim any authority to prescribe it for others I should have qualified how the term is meaningful to me. I dont really want to get into a debate about universally accepted definitions. To me the term artist describes an individual who's drive is to explore the 'what is' and the 'what could be'; to observe, represent, re-interpret, imagine, question, resonate, inspire. For a moment i was going to suggest a search for truth, but transparency & honesty at least are fairly key attributes i guess. Artists live and breath this vocation every day or whenever they can, but they do live it.

For me this is as much about ideas as anything else. As RorrKonn suggests, its not specific to painting, music, writing or any such discipline. Some of the people i consider great artistic minds have no relationship to traditional 'Art' forms at all - one of my best friends is a social entrepreneur & media maker, and i consider him an artist because he fits most if not all of the criteria above. Ideas can be spoken in conversation (thats why its called the Art of conversation), and i truly believe this qualifies. Does all this mean that anyone can be an artist? Yes, of course....but not everyone is (even a few who think they are IMO). 

i guess i'm a little hard on myself because i do, from time to time, approach my activities in life in this way. But most of the time the work i do is as a traditional & digital commercial artisan - skilled, but servicing a commercial master and not my own exploration or ideas. I'm not anti-market or anything, but I don't necessarily believe in or trust a market based ideology. Its an important distinction in my world, and i do beat myself up for it. Money should not be the primary goal of the artist in my mind, even if we do all have to turn a buck one way or another.

Probably the most artistic thing I've done of late is a self-portrait at the age og 40 (couple of years ago now). I set out to take a good hard look at myself and present an honest account of where i was in life. The resulting painting was intended to be quite haunting. I chose to paint in that specific form & style  rather than do a multi-media piece or series of photos because i felt it was indicative of a growing sense of self-satisfaction i'd had in the commercial work i was doing for years - of which, when I stopped to question the intrinsic creative value, I felt was in truth lacking in integrity and somewhat vaccuous & meaningless. Its like many of those dark old Victorian portraits of proud middle-class business men, except I'm depicted in my cosy TV dressing gown in a pathetic moment of realisation that I've not done any of the things I set out to do.  Most honest bit of painting I've done since art school. 

'officially sanctioned' in visual art terms to me didn't really end until the advent of the web. You were always dependent on the Church, the aristocrisy, the salons, the gallery owner, magazine publishers etc. Always exceptions to this, but now anyone who has some kind of access to the internet can share observations & ideas, write a blog, publish a graphic novel or post a render in an online gallery. There are always material pre-requisites to this, but generally speaking there's a wide-open stage for getting your ideas out there and influencing a vastly greater potential worldwide audience. 

The brush-strokes thing is just aesthetics, not at all definitive of being a good or bad painter at all.

Quote - This is a straight from Poser render trying to avoid the realistic/comic style look as mentioned in the original post. I rendered the pic, then applied that render to a (proportionally scaled) square prop and played in the sketch designer until I liked what I saw, sketch rendered and exported it as the jpg you see here. Perhaps not truly a painterly style, but a departure from the normal Poser render, and I quite like it.

Think the Scratches and Blacked out eyes makes it perfect for the pose.

We didn't ask to be borned in to this hell ,where the rich overlords force us to provide them with more money then there ever need.while there leave us with nothing.
We half to eat so we work for them.
Doesn't mean they own are souls.

I pay the bills buy doing there art.

They could never touch my Art thou.

This thread has been an interesting read for me.  I've recently come back to an old copy of Poser 6 I had and am relearning how it works (planning to upgrade to Poser Pro eventually).  While I want to do some photorealistic renders, in part just because right now I don't believe I have the skill level to do so and want to have that in my "bag" so to speak; I'm also interested in more artistic images that are closer to paintings in their final finish.  In particular I like the luminous qualities of old oil paintings.  I think they have a warmth that is very appealing.  I'm far from duplicating that in my own images, and reading what I can find to help me along (not to mention 3 books I had on Poser 6).  Its good to know there are others who both enjoy that kind of style.  Gives me something else to aim for.

Well replied Carodan... Incidently, I have a great respect for your work and participation in this community, I hope it did not appear otherwise.

Like that technique displayed by Raven...the sketch designer feature of poser doesn't seem to get much attention.