LineRender9000 [Commercial]

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Comments

  • Why was this in the daz email but the link dosn't work

  • KA1KA1 Posts: 1,012

    Why was this in the daz email but the link dosn't work

    Looks like the e-mail has gone out but none of the new releases for today are up on the shop yet.
  • IppotamusIppotamus Posts: 1,579

    Product is now live.  :)

  • Sfariah DSfariah D Posts: 26,280

    Would this help make adult coloring books?

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,715

    Is there a video of it being used anywhere?

    I'm interested but it's not a main point of interest, so still undecided.

  • xyer0 said:
    djigneo said:
    xyer0 said:

    I was going to buy Poser Pro 11 for this function alone. Have you used PP11? How does your product compare? I'm not sure if by "constant-width lines" you mean that line width is not user-$3-definable. I hope this works because I'm sure it will be less than the $300-500 I would have to spend on Poser.

    First, let me attempt to clarify what I mean by constant-width lines. Line thickness is a parameter on the Render settings pane, so it is user adjustable. What I meant to say with that phrase is that the lines do not get thicker because the area is in shadow. That is, I mean to draw a distinction between a style of outlining where all the lines are the same thickness and a style of outlining where certain parts of the lines are significantly thicker for emphasis or to represent shadows. I have come to prefer constant-width lines. I've noticed (particularly with surface-shader-based outlining solutions) that some outlining styles in 3d are awkward to control because the line width varies quite a bit -- even on the same object -- and it increases the complexity because one would have to (try to) specify how thin and thick it can go, and even then there's the "normals" issue that @timmins.william brought up earlier in this thread that adds to the trickiness. So, to be clear, this product mostly generates line work that is always e.g. 1 pixel wide throughout a single render pass. 

    I haven't used Poser Pro 11, but I did experiment with Poser 10 a little while ago. Enough to convince me that I like DAZ Studio way better, even based on performance alone. I watched a video on the Poser cartoon and outlining features and will try to talk a little bit to comparing the two. It seems pretty similar to several "cartoon render" options I've experimented with, both in Poser and in Daz Studio (3Delight).

    The TL;DR here is: Poser would theoretically provide a faster workflow because the previewer and the renderer are the same, but you'll largely get what the toon renderer gives you. LineRender9000 is more complex, but seemingly way more flexible.

    • Poser's outliner uses OpenGL whereas LineRender9000 uses 3Delight. This means that in Poser to a degree what you see is what you get, because OpenGL is used for the previews in the viewport so the full render will largely come out the same. This could imply a faster workflow (assuming the tools do what you need) than LineRender9000 because LineRender9000 has to complete several render passes before the user can see what things look like.
    • A big difference seems to be that the OpenGL renders (Poser) seem to do everything in one go, which I've come to believe is less ideal. One of the big things I like about LineRender9000 for my own art now is how much control I have over the individual elements. Shadows are a single render pass, and when compositing manually there's no need to re-render unless the shadows should be different in shape, because the strength can be controlled in the composition. It's the same story with outlines and color. More pieces mean more granular control.
    • Somewhat along the same lines, another consideration of OpenGL vs 3Delight is the support given to those engines within the Studio of choice. 3Delight is a "production" renderer inside of Daz Studio, whereas OpenGL is a "preview" renderer inside of Poser. At face value, what's the big deal about that? Well part of the flexibility of LineRender9000 is the fact that it uses custom (advanced) shaders in form of cameras and surfaces to provide a pretty wide variety of ways to generate the different parts of the scene. This affects so much more than I can really list here but let's take the "cartoon color" effect for example. The "Comic Panel" Poser video seems to suggest that the amount of control you have over cartoon color in Poser is a slider bar that affects the strength of whatever algorithm the designers of Poser decided on, taking into consideration the colors from the material settings, but not the actual shader (since it's not going to eg. FireFly, it's going to OpenGL). In contrast, the cartoon color for LineRender9000 / Daz Studio is whatever surface, light, or camera shader combination you concoct in any renderer supported by Daz Studio. So, LineRender9000's "easy button" for cartoon color is to use the "Toon camera" in 3Delight, which blurs and clamps colors much in the same way, but you're not locked in to that decision: you can switch to anything you want, which in the case of Daz Studio means you could use any of the available "toon shaders" (or pester me to release mine).  Another example is how where lines get drawn is determined. In Poser, it's pretty static and seemingly affected by 2-ish parameters. In LineRender9000 it's based on the camera shader, which has the rather large utility of being able to ignore surface color. That's one of the main goals I was trying to achieve with LineRender9000 in the first place. An object having dark areas due to surface texture shouldn't dictate lines should be there based on a technological limitation. I like the control over that decision. Once again, LineRender9000 has some recommended ways of getting lines, but the artist ultimately decides on the look on a piece-by-piece, case-by-case basis.

    Oh, and as you mentioned, LineRender will be a fraction of the price of Poser 11, but we're not really comparing apples to apples since Poser 11 is a whole studio.

    A man of detail. I love it! Thank you for your comprehensive response and in-depth analysis. I attended Poser's Digital Art Live webinar featuring Tony Puryear and others, and it seems that you have indeed solved my manga production issues. If I had any doubts about LR9K, you removed them, if only because I want to support your products so that you continue creating Daz utilities, since extremists make the best everythings. Thank you for making my life simpler (and less expensive).

    I have to agree, more information is better. Sold me!

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,011

    Dang it. My budget is utterly burned to the ground.

    The good news is that whenever I get more money, I'll probably be buying this at full price. So, um. yay you guys.

     

  • cherpenbeckcherpenbeck Posts: 1,412

    Will buy this, looks ideal for illustrating books where I can't use color.

  • djigneodjigneo Posts: 283

    Would this help make adult coloring books?

    Yes, I imagine it would, assuming the adult coloring books are outlines and detail line representations of scenes you can create in Daz Studio.

     

    nicstt said:

    Is there a video of it being used anywhere?

    I'm interested but it's not a main point of interest, so still undecided.

    I haven't made a video of it. I'm happy to send you a link to the user manual if you're looking to get more detailed information.

     

    And as others have mentioned, it has indeed hit the Daz store.

  • ImagoImago Posts: 5,158

    Maybe someone else already asked...

    This script works with animations?

  • djigneodjigneo Posts: 283
    Imago said:

    Maybe someone else already asked...

    This script works with animations?

    It works for image series, which to my understanding is the way you'd want a cartoon style animation out anyway. Since each frame may require more than one render pass, it can't generate a video of composite images (or at least there's no way to my knowledge to do that).

  • djigneodjigneo Posts: 283

    In a different thread, @jontaylor99 asked:

    do the render settings for this become part of the DAZ render settings, as in, can you select them form the normal pane where you set up renders ? Or does it have to be set from a separate control panel ?

    Yes, the LineRender9000 script is selectable in Render Settings from Engine = Scripted 3Delight, Render Script = LineRender9000. Doing it this way means you can fire off individual renders to generate a main image and a line image. Most commonly, I expect artists to use the LR9k AutoRender script to automate several renders back to back, because usually multiple line images are desired.

  • FirePro9FirePro9 Posts: 456

    Just picked up LR9K, can't wait to start playing with it! 

  • djigneodjigneo Posts: 283
    FirePro9 said:

    Just picked up LR9K, can't wait to start playing with it! 

    Awesome. Quick start guide is definitely the ticket to get up and running fast. The settings presets should get you pretty close to the promo images.

  • So, I recently got Visual Style Shaders but haven't had a chance to use it yet.  How is this product different from that?  I might be up for trying to return that one for this instead.

  • djigneodjigneo Posts: 283

    So, I recently got Visual Style Shaders but haven't had a chance to use it yet.  How is this product different from that?  I might be up for trying to return that one for this instead.

    The TL;DR is that if you're going for a cartoon style you'll probably want something like LineRender9000 (for the line work) as well as a toon surface shader such as Visual Style Shaders, PwToon, or the shader I plan to release (for the image colors). With LineRender9000 I think you can get by with the 3Delight shaders that come with Daz Studio by using the standard surface with Ambient Strength set to 100%, or with the standard Toon Matte shader with outlines turned off. The real trick to get the cartoon look is to use solid colors instead of image maps ​(that's the part people seem to miss). It eventually comes down to what style you're after. If you want to simulate the retro-print look, there are several shaders out there that do that. I like the clean solid color look, so I prefer an ambient looking shader with a little bit of blending between two colors.

    Visual Style Shaders is a surface shader and will give variable-thickness lines. I own and used to use Visual Style Shaders for the colors in my graphic novel style, but have recently switched to my own toon shader which I plan to release soon. The reason I created my own shader is because the toon shaders out there try to create lines along with the main image and as a result are way more complex with too many parameters (in my opinion). LineRender9000 generates the lines separately, so I wanted a shader that was way simpler and supported tiling (which Visual Style Shaders does not). Visual Style Shaders also has ambient occlusion built in, so can render slower.

    LineRender9000 is a set of tools that provides a lot more flexibility for line work, but it pretty much only gives the line work (but to be fair, that's the hard part). As the creator, of course I'm biased, but first and foremost, I made this tool to support my art. I wouldn't have created LineRender9000 if the existing products in the Daz store did what I needed. I tried very hard to get Visual Style Shaders (and ToonyCam Pro, if you care) to give the look I was after, but there were certain parts of the outlines that were just too hard to control and eventually I took matters into my own hands and ended up with LineRender9000.

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,011

    A very simple way to get flat colors is to shut off all lights and use an Ambient light (with occlusion shut off) at 100% (or higher, but not too much or it washes out)

     

  • nDelphinDelphi Posts: 1,862
    djigneo said:

    So, I recently got Visual Style Shaders but haven't had a chance to use it yet.  How is this product different from that?  I might be up for trying to return that one for this instead.

    The real trick to get the cartoon look is to use solid colors instead of image maps ​(that's the part people seem to miss).

    I have explained this to a lot of people. Photo textures for Iray and 3Delight and black and white or solid color image textures for toon shaders. I never liked the photo-real textures on toon renders.

  • KA1KA1 Posts: 1,012

    So, I recently got Visual Style Shaders but haven't had a chance to use it yet.  How is this product different from that?  I might be up for trying to return that one for this instead.

    The Keiko looking a bit Alice in wonderland promo uses Visual Style Shaders for the colouring so if it fits your goal VSS and LR9k can compliment each other.
  • ArtieSArtieS Posts: 11

    I bought LR9K as soon as I saw it in the ad, but unfortunately cannot get the Quick Start Guide to work. All I see is a black .png/.tiff. I followed the 5 easy steps (omitted the 6th for now), and at first it seemed to work (4 popups for the render passes, and not all images are empty), but then there is nothing in the composite image.

    This is the third solution for non-realistic renders I tried, and none of them works for me. May be I'm just too stupid and it's all obvious for other users, but there are too many questions to figure out on my own, for instance:

    - Do I have to switch to Scripted 3Delight in the Render Settings and LineRender9000 as Render Script before following the Qick Start steps? (tried both, to no avail)

    - There are many settings both in the DAZ Studio panel as well as in the LR9K AutoRender Dialog, including paths and output format. They seem to be independent from each other. Which one is the "master"? Or should I always update both, and if so, in which order?

    - When I hit Ctrl+R instead of pressing "Render!" in the LR9K AutoRender Dialog, I see 4 render passes, but the image isn't non-realistic - why?

    - What is a "camera shader"? I only know material shaders so far. Do I have to apply it to something, or is this done by the script?

    - I normally use 3Delight as external renderer (via RIB and a little VB script) - could this be the cause for my render problems?

    I would really appreciate some help, or a step-by-step guide that is a little bit more elaborate than the Quick Start, because the promo images look simply awesome. Thanks in advance

  • KA1KA1 Posts: 1,012
    Hi @ArtieS, if you go to the folder you've saved the outputs to are the all showing as black?
  • ThatGuyThatGuy Posts: 794

    I really am digging this.  Sometimes I want to get away from "realistic" rendering and have always wanted to attain the look of line art in my renders without the need for photoshop filters. this is currently in my shopping cart and I can't wait to have a go at it when I get home this evening.

  • ArtieSArtieS Posts: 11
    KA1 said:
    Hi @ArtieS, if you go to the folder you've saved the outputs to are the all showing as black?

    Thank you for the quick reply :)

    No, the Main camera and Shadow opacity image look (nearly?) white, and the Fresnel reflected v looks good, as far as I can say.

  • Had to make the splurge and bought this.

    Been trying to get a good means to get consistent lines besides manually in PS or Manga Studio.

    I've come up with a nice oil paint looking shader, but could never get a good line to go with it. Dying to give it a try when I get home.

  • WillowRavenWillowRaven Posts: 3,787

    Sooo ... I HAVE to upgrade to 4.9 to use this new, wonderful tool? Does it work with the 4.9Beta? I have been still using 4.7 because I had no interest in Iray and saw no reason to have to learn a new interface for access to a style I had no interest in. But if this won't work in 4.7 ...

  • Sounds to me like you need a Masters Degree to enjoy this product, I've read through the procedure several times now and I still haven't got a blind clue what I'm reading, apart from it renders some pictures if you understand how to work it....hahaha !

     
  • djigneodjigneo Posts: 283

     LineRender9000 Skype chat. Please don't abuse me, but I'm willing to answer questions in a semi-live way or chit-chat about cartoon styles.

     

    ArtieS said:

    - Do I have to switch to Scripted 3Delight in the Render Settings and LineRender9000 as Render Script before following the Qick Start steps? (tried both, to no avail)

    No. LR9k AutoRender will change those as appropriate.

     

    ArtieS said:

    - There are many settings both in the DAZ Studio panel as well as in the LR9K AutoRender Dialog, including paths and output format. They seem to be independent from each other. Which one is the "master"? Or should I always update both, and if so, in which order?

    LR9k AutoRender is the "master".

     

    ArtieS said:

    - When I hit Ctrl+R instead of pressing "Render!" in the LR9K AutoRender Dialog, I see 4 render passes, but the image isn't non-realistic - why?

    I'm fairly certain Ctrl+R doesn't do anything special. The first "main" image will be a normal 3Delight render, there's nothing fancy going on to make it non-realistic. I suggest switching render pass 1 to the Toon cam, which will do some blending and clamping. To get a non-photorealistic style on the "main render", I use surfaces with solid colors as has been discussed a little bit in this thread.

     

    ArtieS said:

    - What is a "camera shader"? I only know material shaders so far. Do I have to apply it to something, or is this done by the script?

    A Camera shader is a special camera that changes the way the scene is interpreted by 3Delight. The cameras included with the product are Camera shaders. If such a camera is active in the viewport when you manually render, you should see some differences. LR9k AutoRender will automatically switch to and use those cameras based on which camera is selected in the render pass. More information is in the user manual.

     

    ArtieS said:

    - I normally use 3Delight as external renderer (via RIB and a little VB script) - could this be the cause for my render problems?

    I don't think that should cause a problem. Exporting to RIB was tested as part of the beta. You would have to render out all the RIB files individually, of course.

    I'm happy to help if you can show me the output images and such, though perhaps we should take this offline, instead of in this thread which I'd like to keep on the subject of features instead of tech support.

  • djigneodjigneo Posts: 283
    ArtieS said:
    KA1 said:
    Hi @ArtieS, if you go to the folder you've saved the outputs to are the all showing as black?

    Thank you for the quick reply :)

    No, the Main camera and Shadow opacity image look (nearly?) white, and the Fresnel reflected v looks good, as far as I can say.

    Oh, and for the Shadow opacity cam, make sure there are A) Lights in your scene and B) Lights are enabled in the render pass if it's set to use the LineRender9000 script

  • ArtieSArtieS Posts: 11

    @djigneo: Thank you very much, and I apologize for hijacking the thread. Your answers should already help a bit (especially that i can use the camera shaders like normal cameras and try them manually). And I will do my homework (reading the manual).

  • DkgooseDkgoose Posts: 1,451

    I was thinking coloring books too, I wonder if there is a way to get little to no shadows though, a lot of toon characters to use for coloring books, definitely ideas for Christmas presents for kids 

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