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Can't Draw? You Need The Inkulator 9000.
NTK was kind enough to point out the Inkulator 9000, software to render pen-and-ink style drawings from 3D meshes. NTK also points to a number of other handy tools and papers.
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it's the other way around.
Programs like this will never replace drawing. 3D Geometry is far too rigid. These types on Non-Photo-Real techniques have been around for years. (Although this is a great attempt). It will be many, many years before we can emulate 2D animation with 3D, and then, what's the point, why not draw it? Not to say that there aren't great applications for NPR like the non photorealistic camera, shown off at SIGGRAPH 2004. It uses multiple flashes and an edge detection algorithm to define hard edges; great for endoscopy and many other functions...
I can /draw/, I just can't 3D model.
I'd love something to turn sketches, or a series of sketches, or whatever, into a 3D model.
...then how the hell are you going to create realistic 3D meshes?
Sure, you could use some that somebody else made. But then it's hard to say what part of the result is actually your work.
Or you could take a 3D scan of some objects. But you may as well just take a snapshot of the objects then, and maybe trace the photo.
No, this sort of software is actually much more useful for people who _can_ draw and/or sculpt, or who at least have a well-developed sense of proportion. Architects have been using this kind of software for years to produce drawings that appear hand-drawn from CAD drawings.
It's hardly a new idea.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Not really, this program may support curves [be they subpatches, or auto-created based upon user input], and the need for high poly count is removed
Video Production Support
Many years ago there was NPR Quake, a mod for Quake I that adds a new rendering system that looks like hand-made pencil drawing.
Check these screenshots.
And here is a more modern version.
Thinkfish produced a realtime artistic rendering engine ( PC and Mac ) around '97. The drawings generated ranged from charcoal, pen & ink, watercolor, over 30 styles. I was one of the engineers on the project. We did a plug in for SGI Cosmo Worlds, and Painter3D, as well as Archicad. My personal favorite was being able to render a charcoal drawing style walkthrough with QuicktimeVR. Looked very much like the A-HA "Take On Me" music video circa '85.
see LiveArt IMHO - I've yet to see it done better - especially considering we did it realtime.
This is an interesting tool with potential...but I can't really see myself using it too much. I am already satisfied with Poser and Bryce for my 3d rendered webcomic, I can't really see myself putting in hours of work only to shred it to create a look I was trying to avoid in the first place. To each their own of course
Requiem
no it's not, it's simply a different way of doing user interfaces.
Once you use it for a significant amount of time it will reveal itself to actually be a very well designed interface. Can understand why people don't like it, otherwise windows clones like KDE or Gnome wouldn't be so popular, but that doesn't make it unusable.
There are tons of better software than this
"inkulator" (which is pronounced like a really bad insult in french, "enculator" [buttf*cker] ).
I have been using illustrate for a while and it was used by others to create the original windows XP icons, architecture drawings, technical drawings and
many cartoons including animated features such as Corto Maltese...
Take a look at the other galleries, some of the renderings are really impressive.
"I think you would need very high poly counts on your mesh to achieve a level of detail good enough to look like professional cartoons."
Nah, not really. Modelling for toon shading is a different technique, though. It's about creating edges so that the inking software can figure out where to draw the ink. Normal 3D rendering is about creating polygons to get the right shading per rendered pixel. (Not to mention, you also need good textures, lighting, etc etc.)
"If it's just to do an image (or a few), I don't think its worth the effort. "
Not true. A stylistic choice from photo-realism to this sort of inking would result in a great deal less work. As I said before, you don't need as much polygonal detail. (You need good edges, though...) You also don't need a lot of lights or textures. It doesn't take many data points for software like this to generate an outline.
"But nothing will ever beat SouthPark characters... so simple, and so much personality!"
That's entirely up to the artist. Go over to www.cgtalk.com and look at the gallery. Though this sort of rendering isn't done so often there, I think it will better punctuate my statement about it being up to the artist.
"Derp de derp."
--Unless an artist uses very rigid rules of perspective, (which most comics and classic animations I've seen rarely bother with), then information represented visually is unrestrained by 3d physical rules. "Squish & Stretch" in the Bugs Bunny universe only works in a 2d, non-logical environment. EVERY time I've seen eyeballs bugging out attempted by 3d software, it looks scary and unsettling rather than funny. That's only one very small example.
This is why, while I enjoyed animations like "Toy Story" and "Finding Nemo", I found them to be limited.
Stories bubble up from the realm of the subconscious; the dream world. Stripping them of that quality seems far more a time-saving compromise than it does an artistic achievement.
But then there are so many people hell-bent on stripping this world of all things non-logical, non-literal, non-material that this latest move to cut out the intuitive aspect of humanity should be expected as a very 'logical' step, I suppose.
Materialism is what you are left with once you have reduced your sensory inputs to only include those sanctioned by the "Learning Channel" and your high school science teacher.
Next stop: Voluntary Autism!
The logical half of our minds, while powerful, is over-used and our intuitive sides are shunned and atrophied. The most powerful people will always be those have the two sides working in concert.
But of course, I suspect the Powers That Be don't want the populations which feed them to be powerful or aware of any possibilities beyond those within very limited, very strict parameters. This is largely why, I think, computers have been allowed to spread as they have. Computers cannot think Outside of the Box.
I find it interesting that early on, there were efforts put into the development of analog computers. The theories were sound, but the funding went elsewhere. .
-FL