I know that the usual thing people want to do with their renders is to make them either look toonish, or more realistic like a photograph. 

I want to know if there is a way to make a Poser render look like an oil painting. or even a water color painting?

Look in the sketch renderer - for starters.  There are tons of various sketch - algorithms I guess you'd call them - again for starters.  Then, there is always postwork - Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, etc.  Probably a lot more options in Poser 5+, i.e., shaders and so forth.

Might be worth a look.

 Yeah, I was hoping i could do most or all of it in Poser. I guess I did kind of figure some Photoshop was going to be inevitable, but I'm not that good with PS.

PS would certainly be an obvious option, but I didn't mean it would be the only one.  Frankly, I strongly suspect a lot of stuff like that could be done with combinations of mats, shaders, lights, and other manipulations, perhaps combining renders, which I guess would lead to PS or some equivalent.

A lot of experimentation would certainly be in order, and that can't be a bad thing!  Stuff discovered along the way could enrich one's experience, perhaps others' as well, i.e., marketplace, freebies, tutes, etc.  That's a beautiful painting there, BTW.

Edit: Or at least there WAS a beautiful painting there, LOL!  Seems to have vanished.

> Quote - PS would certainly be an obvious option, but I didn't mean it would be the only one.  Frankly, I strongly suspect a lot of stuff like that could be done with combinations of mats, shaders, lights, and other manipulations, perhaps combining renders, which I guess would lead to PS or some equivalent. > > A lot of experimentation would certainly be in order, and that can't be a bad thing!  Stuff discovered along the way could enrich one's experience, perhaps others' as well, i.e., marketplace, freebies, tutes, etc.  That's a beautiful painting there, BTW. > > Edit: Or at least there WAS a beautiful painting there, LOL!  Seems to have vanished.

Wanted to give an example of the kind of Painting i was looking to try for. That was an oil painting called the Garden Party.  Took it out because I thought it was too big. Put it back smaller.

Don't underestimate the Material Room. You can set up a painter effect using the textures and bump mapping.

These products by Olivier over at RDNA might be of interest to you:

www.runtimedna.com/Art-Materials-Vol.2-Dry-Shaders.html

www.runtimedna.com/ART-MATERIALS-Vol.1-Cartoon-Shaders.html

www.runtimedna.com/Art-Materials-Vol1F-Smooth-Shaders.html

 Thanks Little Dragon. A little pricey for me, especially these days, but something to keep in mind.

If you were interested in buying a Bamboo graphics table, the fun bundle includes Corel Painter Essentials 4 and Paintshop Prop X2 for under $90 (not bad considering that any one of those items is roughly that cost). Painter is the best application to make something look like a painting. I haven't found any Poser Sketch presets that come close. Some shaders might, but I haven't played around enough with them to find out.

Attached Link: xero-graphics free photoshop plugins

The link above to xero-graphics has downloads of some filter such as "Illustrator" and esp. "Carvagio" which produces results far better than shown in the authors samples. Above is a render with a one-click aplication of Caravagio.

Mike Finn has great Photoshop actions if you are comfortable with using actions. See:
http://homepages.slingshot.co.nz/~mikefinn/slapdash.html

These threads /may/ be of some interest...

Re: 1950s Advertising Rendering
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2769339&page=2#message_3431295

Trying to create flat textures
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3307228&ebot_calc_page#message_3307228

HELP! Need help making wrinkles in fabric!
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?message_id=3319333&ebot_calc_page#message_3319333

o.k., thx fr lnks, LD.  apparently (judging from the j. rabbit monotoon) he's using a falloff shader for the linework, but he's still not using a directional falloff shader (weaker or stronger depending on direction of  lite) due to the compositing probs it may present to end users.

p.s.  after 10+ yrs of using photoshop/poser and studying art criticism at univ., IMVHO it's not possible for somebody who can't already sketch/draw with pencil/pen/charcoal and paint with acrylic/oil/watercolour to do a presentable imitation of an oil/watercolour/acrylic painting using poser.  by "not presentable", I mean that a professional art critic would take one look at it, say "computer-generated", then move on to the next item.

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

> Quote -  I know that the usual thing people want to do with their renders is to make them either look toonish, or more realistic like a photograph.  > > > I want to know if there is a way to make a Poser render look like an oil painting. or even a water color painting?

Have you come across bagginsbill's Artistic Lens? It's free, and sits in Poser between the camera and the scene. You can experiment with shaders in the lens to give all sorts of effects. It may not be suitable for what you want to do, but it's worth looking at.

See link to the thread.

if high prices have got you down, there's also the gimp dot org. (web site). it's a Photoshop 'knockoff', but it does most of the same things, and it's free. I tried a posterize (I think that's what it was) that reduced the color variations down some. It's Open Source, so that's why it's free. There's even a Linux version.

Artrage  from smithmicro might be something you would be interested in actually paints with brushes and gives a great affect.

http://www.contentparadise.com/productDetails.aspx?id=696

ArtRage 2.5 is $24 from the author Ambient Design IRC and they have a free Starter Edition that has most of the features and is not hobbled. An amazing software far better than Corel Painter. Much of the ArtRage engine is included in later versions of PaintShopPro BTW.

 I got a new cheap software which has a lot of photoshop like filters - it's called pixelmator.  It works very well.
And at rDNA there is a photoshop like python script to do photoshop like filtering right from within poser.  It's by semidieu
Love esther

Quote - if high prices have got you down, there's also the gimp dot org. (web site). it's a Photoshop 'knockoff', but it does most of the same things, and it's free. I tried a posterize (I think that's what it was) that reduced the color variations down some. It's Open Source, so that's why it's free. There's even a Linux version.

I never cease to be amazed at The GIMP - sure, all the tutorials out there are for PS or PSP but there is a very active and imaginative GIMP community... if you were to have a look at what they've been able to achieve:
vidar.gimp.org/gimpressionist/shots.html
www.tutorialized.com/view/tutorial/Turning-a-Photo-in-a-Sketch/36276
www.gimp.org/tutorials/