My thesis is in its final stages, so I’m finally going to start updating my blog with CG! First up is a test with non-photorealistic rendering. There is plenty of inspiration out there which is driving my interest, but what really motivated me was the recently released Diablo III cinematic. The begging of it has a really awesome style to it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nas1rJpm7wY
So, since the labs are closed for the day, I began experimenting this morning and came up with this:
I’m using the facing ratio of the object to drive a ramp which selects the color. To break it up a bit, I averaged a bump-mapped shader with the facing ratio, and connected that to the ramp. I got the idea for the approach from http://sunnykharbanda.com/blog/2009/10/behind-the-toons-part-2-the-shader/ (thanks!).
I altered the shading network as I saw fit (which I’ll describe once I make more progress), and with some minimal comping, came up with the above result.
It isn’t quite where I want it to be, but it’s a good start. The next step is to adjust the contours to get something similar to brush strokes.