A npr renderer for Wings?

[Dimitri]

Given that Wings is an excellent modeler for presentations of various objects, it would be very useful to have a simple line art (npr) renderer implemented in it. A renderer which will render the hard edges with lines in various thicknesses and keeping the face color information too (producing a contour line around the whole objects also, of course). Such a renderer would add a lot to the app's functionality as a whole. It would upgrade it to a nice illustration producing app… excellent for presenting accurate line drawings.

Does anyone has some idea of how such a thing can be achieved (and if it is possible to be achieved), as to the programming side of the idea?

[puzzledpaul]

I seem to remember something similar to this being available a few yrs or so ago - or am I mistaken / correct - but different from what you're after?

pp

[Dimitri]

I do not remember Wings' having some such feature in all its development history. Maybe the thing you remember was something different.

This is a feature that there has been a lot of times where I have felt its need. There are so many cases that you want to present in a clear cut line image the model you have done and you are forced to export it to other apps. The problem is, however, that there is no such a renderer in free apps around. Blender's internal line image producing means have some problems as to giving a so clear cut result. Freestyle (the npr renderer which they want to integrate to Blender) is good but there too there are some problems in depicting such a clear cut line image (apart from its being very slow in its workings, in cases where the scene to render is somehow 'heavy').

Wings' having such a renderer would elevate its significance as an app to quite another level, indeed... it will make it a very useful graphical presentation app too.

[micheus]

Maybe this article can show its complexity: NPR with Pixel and Vertex Shaders

But, we can find sources code written in C. I just don't know they can have good performance in Erlang (if converted, of course):
Silhouette Extraction

Image Precision Silhouette Edges

[Dimitri]

Hello Micheus... my idea is not so much about having a fully fledged 'toon' renderer... it is just about having a very simple line art renderer which could depict in a clear cut way the hard edges of an object plus its silhouette. Such a renderer may have two options: one for depicting only the lines (a black and white line rendering) and one depicting the lines with a simple scanline shading rendering.

I know there is the already existent export to 'cartoon edges' (eps) choice... but if you want to represent the object in lines and shadows you have to obtain another shaded rendering and synthesize it with the lines image in an image editing app... something that will produce a difficulty as to layering the two images so that they may fit each other accurately.

The best way is to have a very simple internal renderer that will make the work inside Wings... this will make very accessible to re-pose the objects immediately and render them directly, in a very easy way.

Below there is a page with a lot of links to npr related locations, hope that it can be of some help... I am totally illiterate in programming matters, but I suppose someone who has some idea may find many things in it:

http://www.red3d.com/cwr/npr/#toon

[micheus]

Below there is a page with a lot of links to npr related locations...
http://www.red3d.com/cwr/npr/#toon

unfortunately, with lot of non valid links.

I'm still not sure about what edge silhouette style are you talking. Any picture?

[Dimitri]

A render result as the one in the image below is a good one, for example... clear lines, preservation of materials' colors and some shading for depicting the forms:

http://gallery.mcneel.com/?i=29953

[oort]

I googled and found a couple of open source programs. Didn't read enough about it to know for sure, but maybe someone could make a plug-in to export to one of them. Blender apparently has something started for Freestyle... So you could just export from Wings3D and use Blender.... beating Ran13 to the punch...

Freestyle Freestyle Homepage

Ink9000 Ink9000 Homepage

oort

[Dimitri]

Oort, Freestyle is a good npr renderer, for sure... however, it has some difficulty to produce a clean cut line rendering, as far as I know from my experiments with it. Its edge detection has to be more accurate. And it is too slow too in its workings.

Blender's internal line renderer is better to my opinion. If it had some more options it would be enough for producing very clean cut line rendering results... but the developers have abandoned the further development of it because of Freestyle (they do think to integrate it officially to Blender in some future version).

The rendering kind I do mean is just as the one in the video below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=end...qclWI&NR=1

[nemyax]

Dimitri
How about using Renderman cel shaders and Zaribok? There are probably a few good shaders floating around if you look hard enough.