Return to Noelren portraits

[pyrophorus]

Hi,
Still searching for "cheap" ways to create portraits, I did this one with 3D software. At least, pose, shading and lights are correct.

Lestiviel-I.png (109.67 KiB) Viewed 4896 times

How does it looks in your eyes ? Acceptable ? Awful ?

Friendly,

[TheScribe]

Well, it looks good, but it looks like it was made with 3D software. I know it was, but it doesn't look consistent with the Wesnoth portraits. Maybe if you can remove the feel that it was made out of clay?

Also, the left arm looks funny at the elbow. Don't really know why, but the bend looks funny.

Still looks good though.

[zookeeper]

Well, it's not awful. Still, in order to improve it, I'd suggest experimenting with render settings quite a bit. Most importantly, try to figure out a way to render outlines (either as a separate image you can combine with the basic render in a 2D app, or not). Also, a cell/toon shader might be worth trying; it wouldn't produce as painterly images as LordBob's and kitty's are, but it might still work better than a plain 3D render. In any case, you should prepare to have to do some amount of post-processing in a 2D app.

[battlestar]

In photoshop, filter>artistic>

paint daubs or rough pastel or a combination seems to work better than the rest.

They probably need more processing but this could be the initial step. The main problematic area with these rendering is the face.

The elbow looks odd because the concavity at the dorsal surface of the arm, where the triceps should have been

triceps.jpg (61.31 KiB) Viewed 4852 times

[Crow_T]

What are you rendering with, looks like an old scanline- go to Blender.org, the new cycles render engine is fast, accurate, and pretty forgiving. You can also do toon rendering, plus for more advanced toon rendering look for a "freestyle" build on graphicall.org. Other free options are luxrender and yafaray.

[pyrophorus]

Thanks to you all for your replies...

Well, my problem here is not I lack tools or tutorials, but skills. I'm not a good artist and shall not become one tomorrow. For now, I only want to produce some not totally awful portraits for my campaign. If I summarize your suggestions, I think you're pushing me to mimic as best as possible the Wesnoth mainline style. Given I will not be able to make better than an awkard attempt to conform Kitty's or LordBob's style, I fear it shall give even worse results than working without any constraint.
Well, using a toon shader (and more light, because Battlestar clearly found the pic is too dark) gives this:

Lestiviel-II.png (115.9 KiB) Viewed 4789 times

Is it really better in your opinion ? I can too shut the light coming from the staff to simplify the shadows. It was to create some effect like this:

Lestiviel-III.png (78.77 KiB) Viewed 4789 times

These modifications are not time consuming. Creating outlines is. I don't want to spend a lot of time on a finally bad result.
@T_Crow: using Cycles out of the box gives this:

Lestiviel-C.png (101.47 KiB) Viewed 4789 times

Friendly,

[Crow_T]

Hmmm, I guess there are many ins and outs- what software is this originally created in? What did you export as? Many external renderers require you to remake materials according to their spec, so it can be a bit of tweaking for a good final result.

These modifications are not time consuming. Creating outlines is.

totally agree here, linework adds a massive amount of time to a portrait.

[pyrophorus]

... Many external renderers require you to remake materials according to their spec, so it can be a bit of tweaking for a good final result.

Exactly, that's why I posted this crap. To show I can try and learn a lot of wonderful softwares and finally get nothing done one year later
I just want to know if my pictures are worth to be used or if I would better use mainline portraits.
Friendly,

[johndh]

You'll probably want to make the background transparent as well, by the way. You can do this by changing RGB to RGBA in the render settings.

[pyrophorus]

You'll probably want to make the background transparent as well, by the way.

Sure ! This blue background is only for publishing purpose.
No other opinion ?
Friendly,

[Heindal]

I tried to find a "cheap" ways to create portraits too. The problem is the comic style and the (really) high quality of the ingame portraits.
If there is a way, it is not cheap or done in just a few minutes. Your elven looks nice, but will not fit to the other portraits used with Battle for Wesnoth.

One technique I used to create drawings is to redraw the lines of selfmade photos on a new layer, but that takes time and you will end up with an unfilled drawing. I tried several filters in photoshop, there are some ways to combined several filters by using inversions. That is a way to turn a Photo into a comic like picture, but its all not convincing. There are some plugins such as "Toon it", "Stylize", "Sketch" which will allow you to create drawings of a photo, but that is not a cheap way. It is not an option but I just wanted to mention it.

[Frogger5]

I can't link it now, but if you search "Planetside 2 concept art" on YouTube, there's a couple of videos that involve using 3D imagery for drawing.

[Crow_T]

Here is a cool technique that can be used as a starting point, or even a multiply/overlay layer over a flat-shaded piece. http://www.blendernation.com/2009/08/03 ... -polygons/\

Also with 3d you could easily get to this point:


Just a basic flat shader and toon lines, which can be rendered on separate layers btw. I imagine with the above technique you could vary the opacity of said multiply/overlay layer and/or tweak it with a filter to get closer to the mainline version.

Obviously the OP isn't interested, but if others are I can point them to Blender resources.