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Marius Oberholster Hey! I'm having an incredible learning experience, not only learning how Blender works (yes, still learning), but also about Open-Source and the incredible software available. Stick around!

A take on toon shading_Compositing

May 27, 2014
Hey all!

When I saw I hadn't shared this yet, I was really surprised. Must be because I'm so tired, hahaha. No worries, here we go:

(complete scene - Blender Render + Freestyle + Compositing)

When GOD gave me the idea for this image, I really felt fear creep onto me that it would not look good and oh snap! I am very happy with this one's result. It did not come out at all like I imagined it would. It is always such a blessing when that happens, so this one will be making it to the Home page.

Anyway, onto the technical side of things.
In order to get the above result, you need to do a few things:
- Separate Freestyle from your background scene, or Blender will crash or hang
- Separate your foreground and your background in a way that compliments the outline (ie, give your freestyle layer a black backdrop to prevent blue from the sky from bleeding into the final image)
- Uses the same lightsources on a separate layer to secure reflections and shadows
- Index index index, vector blur, vector blur, vector blur, composite, composite, composite

The first point is pretty self-explanatory, but not everyone will know how to do this, so. When you want to prevent freestyle from operating on a specific object, you can do so by removing it from a group render, but the problem is, Freestyle will still take it's form into account. This means that Freestyle, though incredible, is not equipped to handle massive scenes or high-detail objects. Remedying this is simple:
- You move your background objects to another layer and include your 2D shapes on it as well (you can have one thing on all layers, for example, it's not limited to one)
- On your background layer, you disable Freestyle
- Again, make sure you have your light sources on their own layer, but included in both render layers.

If you render now, with light sources and things, Blender will only apply Freestyle to the render layers that have it enabled.

Compositing this is no easy feat, but let me explain it like this: mask mask mask, haha.
You have a very definite outline with animation and you want that outline visible and not crowded with messy info or wrong info, that's why we make the background black where your 2D shapes are, before mixing them in with our backdrop.

On the backdrop, to accommodate this outline and add the painterly effect, we make the 2D objects there black entirely. So, now you have your 2D, freestyle shapes, on a black backdrop and black areas where those objects are to go on the background.

Run all these through some Vector Blur nodes and just mix the two together, using the painterly effect in this post. I would add though, I no longer use Color to add color back, but screen. When you simply use color, you end up with a much darker background. Sacrificing a little saturation for the sake of clarity is not a problem imo :D.

Now all you need to do is add some lens effects, like glares.

Hope that helps!!

Thank YOU!!!!!!!!!
 

Things

May 22, 2014
Hey all!

Been very busy, but thankfully, I have gotten to verse images and updating the portfolio. So, for today, I have two things to share!

(screen shot of but a small part of the portfolio - this page only represents the tip of the iceberg, so I added links to more works. Find out more about how this portfolio selection had been approached in this post)

The second item of the day is, of course, a new verse image.

Today's verse image share is again about creation. I firmly side with AiG (Answer...

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Volumetrics in BGE

May 12, 2014
Hey all!

Yesterday, I went looking for a post I thought I had done on volumetrics in the game engine and I was shocked to see that it is nowhere to be found! Nowhere!!! I did find that I had included the volumetrics example in a different post, which you can check out here.

So, today's QBT is on, you guessed it, volumetrics in BGE! :D

Okay, so just for example's sake, go check out the post linked to above -- it'll open in a new tab or window, so you won't need to click back and reload. Also, thi...
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Animation is fluid

May 8, 2014
Hey all!

I found this video very interesting and it actually only occurred to me right now, thanks to GOD :D, that most of the stretching and effects shown here, have to do with a motion blur and the basic distortion of shapes when they move, ie displacement of fluid and flexible materials, the rest have to do with physics and timing and some exaggeration to help tell the story:

The illusion of life from cento lodigiani on Vimeo.

I luv that Vimeo's embed code included the text above, so cool!

De...
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