There's a lot of discussion about PBR and making renders look photoreal, but I find I'm just not into that these days. I prefer stuff that looks more hand-drawn, or at least stays well away from the uncanny valley. Yes, it can be done in post, but I'm interested in what you can do in Poser. I've seen some really nice stuff done in Preview mode or Sketch mode, but it never looks as good when I try it. Any tips?

HartyBart has links to useful scripts here:

https://www.renderosity.com/forums/threads/2979149/what-you-know-now-that-you-did-not-know-then

Primorge's images here are kinda cool:

https://www.renderosity.com/forums/threads/2979228/firefly-render-issue?page=1

Any advice welcome.

Also willing to buy RMP products, if there are any that are relevant. (I've already bought a lot of Photoshop actions.)

Diffuse IBL flood (with no image attached) in conjunction with procedural noise/edge blend/ comic preview etc can produce interesting toon effects in OpenGL. Takes 1 second to render. Overall Poser has very beautiful preview styles for illustrative stuff.

No post. Live preview.

Downside (depending on your aesthetic aims) is that, unless you do a bit of fussing and post, the line weights can be a bit dead if you're looking for a more brush line or nib type line weight. Or you can just make friends with the style as it is and go with that like I tend to do. The lines tend to have a more rapidograph style. 

Also rendering very large helps with the aliasing of the line work out of preview, the above images were rendered not terribly large for the intent to illustrate a forum point in demo rather than to be "artworks" for art's sake. Literal illustrations. You'll get better lines larger, then you can downsize. Doesn't increase the render time or resources any.

Sketch renderer in my case has been useful to add interesting line/texture effects as a composite layer in post, as in here in conjunction with Firefly IBL/AO...

The method you use will be dependent on the final style / medium you want.

1. For comics, use the basic method the pros use. At its most basic that is to separate your base colours from the ink line-art that sits on top. In Poser that means two PNG cutout renders of the same size, that are then combined in Photoshop.

You can then freely filter both in Photoshop, without one layer damaging the other.

The very quick example above uses an unpromising dark and grungy figure, with texture completely un-optimised for comics. The first combo shows the most basic layering of a simple bog-standard render, with a line-art render of the same made with Poser's real-time Comic Book in b&w mode. The line-art goes on top, and the base layer has shadows lifted (since it's too dark and grungy) using Photoshop's native Shadows/Highlights. You can either actually knock out all the white to reveal the layer beneath the line-art, or just set the bending mode do that.

The second combo on the right is the same but after filtering the base layer. The lineart layer has also been filtered, with a G'Mic custom preset. The original base layer is then dropped back on top, and set to a Photoshop blending mode. Often this mode can be "Colour", to force the colours back to their pre-filtering original shades (filters often shift colours). But here I've gone for a more stylised look. This is not the finished product, but a good semi-neutral base which can form part of a comic and on which you can build. You might stroke a mask to add a thick 'holding line' around the character, to help them stand out against a dark background.

Forget all about Photoshop Actions. Photoshop plugin filters such as Mediachance's products and G'MIC are your friends there, and are all you need - and one of them is free.

Remember comics require consistency, and that comics buyers will not accept anything that looks like 'Poser art' (ComiXology explicitly bans it from the store). So you need to develop a workflow that gives you that and hides the Poser-ness. But first, learn to make a clean line-art render from Poser, either with Firefly lines-only, or Comic Book. Or both, since both have things that the other lacks.

2. Sketch is really another thread, but know that Sketch can be run on Poser's Comic Book line-art...

The disadvantage with Sketch is that you don't get the render as a .PNG cutout. Which makes it more awkward to use in the Photoshop layer stack.

Thanks, Primorge. I really like this one:

Did you have to do anything special with the textures?

HartyBart posted at 5:57 AM Sun, 14 May 2023 - #4465277

Forget all about Photoshop Actions. Photoshop plugin filters such as Mediachance's products and G'MIC are your friends there, and are all you need - and one of them is free.

I have downloaded G'MIC but I don't think I've ever used it. I'll have to experiment.

I don't really care about consistency, and I'm not planning to make a comic or sell anything. I just want to make stuff for myself. Good tips for others who might have different aspirations, though. I have noticed that anything that looks hand drawn gets way more love on social media than even the best 3D render.

I think I know why I never used GMIC. It just won't install on my system. I've installed filters before with no problem, but I cannot get GMIC to load for love or money.

Adobe says GMIC is not compatible with the latest version of Photoshop. Guess I shouldn't have updated.

randym77 posted at 1:22 PM Sun, 14 May 2023 - #4465299

Thanks, Primorge. I really like this one:

Did you have to do anything special with the textures?

The thing is that I come from a hand drawing/comics/ traditional media background, so things looking like they were done in Poser doesn't bother me. If it did I just wouldn't use Poser or 3d in general. I don't see any reason to try and fool any one into thinking something was hand inked, I use this style in Poser because I like this look in Poser (amongst others including PBR)

I use 3d because I enjoy modeling, morphing, and texturing. The images are simply the end artifact of a process not really the total intent. Frankly I'm so jaded from 'looking at' art images that it's really not that interesting to me any more. Making the stuff, the process, I still find very satisfying though. I guess that sounds pretty weird. Or maybe like enjoying cooking a meal but not really caring about eating it.

Here's a some hand inked/drawn things on paper, some photoshop gradients added much later, here and there. This stuff is a few decades old now...

Pen and ink, photoshop gradients

Pen and ink, pantone markers, white gouache on paper

Pencil on sketch paper

Pen and ink, photoshop assembly.

It's the uncanny valley I dislike. I think a lot of us Poser users don't even see it very well any more, because we're so used to it.

And I think it's actually worse now than it used to be. Because Superfly can be so realistic. Some things like glass and metal can look photographically real, which makes less realistic stuff like skin look jarring. Hair generally never looks real in Superfly.

Ideally you want the version of Dynamic Auto Painter that runs as a native Photoshop plugin rather than a standalone. I forget exactly what it's called. Ah yes, here we go.... it's the $100+ "Photo Reactor + Reactor Player for Photoshop". Basically DAP for Photoshop, and it has basically the same Graphic Novel filter but more easily tweaked for humanising line-art from Firefly. Then you can include it in a custom Photoshop Action, once you get the workflow nailed down in a notebook and can then automate most of it.

Such a pity you can't run the latest G'Mic. For Photoshop CC you should be able to drop the .8BF file in  C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Plug-ins\CC and it should just work. At least on Windows. Could be that you use a Mac? I never knew Mac users couldn't run it. They do have an online version, so you can see what you're missing. Then perhaps look at various Mac software that includes it as native - Krita, digiKam, or even (shudder) Gimp.

Ideally you want the version of Dynamic Auto Painter that runs as a native Photoshop plugin rather than a standalone. I forget exactly what it's called. Ah yes, here we go.... it's the $100+ "Photo Reactor + Reactor Player for Photoshop". Basically DAP for Photoshop, and it has basically the same Graphic Novel filter but more easily tweaked for humanising line-art from Firefly. Then you can include it in a custom Photoshop Action, once you get the workflow nailed down in a notebook and can then automate most of it.

Thanks. I might buy it when it goes on sale. I think that's how I got the standalone version.

Such a pity you can't run the latest G'Mic. For Photoshop CC you should be able to drop the .8BF file in  C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Plug-ins\CC and it should just work. At least on Windows. Could be that you use a Mac? I never knew Mac users couldn't run it. They do have an online version, so you can see what you're missing. Then perhaps look at various Mac software that includes it as native - Krita, digiKam, or even (shudder) Gimp.

Used Hartybart's method. With the "soft light" blending mode.

Sort of. I used a Preview render for the lineart, because the hair didn't look good otherwise.

I rather like it.

Randym77 said... I might buy it when it goes on sale"

Photo Reactor + Reactor Player for Photoshop is already on a perma-sale, which hasn't changed for years. And it never gets a further discount.

Used Hartybart's method. With the "soft light" blending mode.

Sort of. I used a Preview render for the lineart, because the hair didn't look good otherwise.

I rather like it.

...Also, for preview renders make sure to bump up the preview texture resolution (render settings) and the shadow resolution (light properties tab).

I wonder if it's possible to modify sketch presets so the lines are more broken.

I think I'd also turn off shadows next time (at least for the hair). I don't care for how the hair shadows turned out.

Tried Primorge's method. Live preview, IBL light. Just a test, I know the styles of the models clash.

I think transmapped hair has to be rendered. It just doesn't look right in preview.

I had a long detailed set of advice and guidance here, but the forum software is nightmare and blanked my reply twice. I give up.

Here's the gist of what I was going to post, before the infernal useless forum software blanked it. This time, without links.

Randy...

1. The screenshot has jaggies. it's easy to remove the jaggies. Top Menu | Render | Anti-alias Document. The anti-aliasing is done automatically if you render to Preview.

2. To remove or reduce horrible grungy textures (e.g. the dragon):

a. Remove them manually, and replace with toon textures.

b. Blur them out in Poser with some magic Python, while retaining something of the base colour.

c. Lift the gamma in Poser. Poser has a native script for them. Top Menu | Scripts > MaterialMods | Change Gamma.

3. Just because a figure has a toon 'look' doesn't mean they will toon well in terms of the real-time Comic Book inking lines. Always slightly open the mouth, so that a mouth line gets "inked" by the Comic Book mode.

4. Hair. Toon hair is good, if this is the type of figure you're going for. This is quick demo scene of the base Near Me figure that I did to accompany an interview, and is not optimised for production (e.g. the strange 'white lips' line). But you get the idea, on the hair.

Basic demo...

randym77 posted at 2:14 PM Sun, 14 May 2023 - #4465305

Adobe says GMIC is not compatible with the latest version of Photoshop. Guess I shouldn't have updated.

BTW, can someone notify HartyBart to unblock me?  I can't see his comments and I think he can't see mine.  It is really getting annoying.

Hartybart, please unblock hborre! He wants to see your comments.

(And thanks very much for the tips, will work on it.)