Physically Based 3D Cartoon Art.
interpolator
Edit: Since Polycount updated, I have to update my first post too, so it shows my newest work and not the old ones in the previews!!
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Edit as of November 5th, 2015:
The original OP is now dated (duh) but to clear up some confusion, I didn't mean to say I invented realistic painting. The real purpose of this thread is I like Looney Tunes, and other older and perhaps obscure cartoons. With those influences, I now want to draw them with an idea of realistic lighting (PBR), but not to the point of complete or near photorealism.
For what references I'm using, I've added them in this post.
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Practice Tree Scene
Stylized Toronto King Street (in progress)
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Edit as of November 5th, 2015:
The original OP is now dated (duh) but to clear up some confusion, I didn't mean to say I invented realistic painting. The real purpose of this thread is I like Looney Tunes, and other older and perhaps obscure cartoons. With those influences, I now want to draw them with an idea of realistic lighting (PBR), but not to the point of complete or near photorealism.
For what references I'm using, I've added them in this post.
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Practice Tree Scene
Stylized Toronto King Street (in progress)
Replies
good initiative, Keep it up!
Do you mean to paint in a Monsters university pixar aesthetic?
Edit: I sent you a PM.
btw, dont do material studies on white backbrounds. actually never paint anything on a white background =P use a neutral gray, that way you can clearly see your lights and darks.
I also did a black & white paint over of how I expect the lighting to be (with reflections coming). Really can't wait to give this some color!
Some more progress.
I don't know, but I thought this was just concept art, and maybe they're planning on using a PBR game engine like UE4 to bring their concept to life.
Though, if they are talking about merely painting "PBR," then I would agree with you that they're seemingly mistaken about the concept.
And, in case they are, I would explain:
Physically-Based Rendering (PBR) is a concept of real-time representation of realistic (or, at least, physical-like) properties of surfaces, as seen used in next-gen 3D game engines like Unreal Engine 4.
Which programs do you used?
- Escudero
Photoshop
3DS Max
Other that that, I think, just be careful about not cluttering you image. Also are you going to attach the shadows on the left or is that a style thing?
Keep it up!
Shadows are temp.
As for PBR, you'll see it soon. This scene isn't really the best to show it, because of how big and zoomed out it is. But I want to show each object having a degree of "roughness/reflectivity" just like in a real PBR system would.
The easiest example I can think of right now are the cars, where I've been studying how they reflect each other (and the environment) and I want to depict something similar.
This is just being silly.
Look at Pixar's films if you want to see PBR that isn't generated from photo reference, and isn't photo realistic. PBR and stylized rendering are not mutually inclusive or exclusive.
To qualify as physically based, all you need is a system of shaders that light the world in a physically accurate manner, and a set of art content with logical, calibrated values. You can do PBR with simple, cartoon style textures as long as those textures have logical values.
What we're seeing in this thread, I'm not sure how I would categorize it. The shaders are very much NPR (non-photo realistic), but again that doesn't mean it can't be physically based. With the completely flat shading here, I would struggle to call this PBR, but that doesn't mean you can't do stylized PBR.
PBR is not a style, its a mathematical system to calculate color and light, the closest thing ive seen to PBR painting is Muzzs color constructor, but even that is just you know, painting.
"Photometry is the science of the measurement of light, in terms of its perceived brightness to the human eye."
Yeah, I think we agree there. To be physically based, you need to have calibrated real world values. I think I misread your original post as if you had stated photogrammetry was required.
Also Muzz. It's true the term PBR refers to all the crazy maths about lighting. However, the point of this is I want to make art that is inspired by all those maths.
Reflections, fresnel, roughness, conservation of energy etc are all important concepts that get brought up in almost every PBR circle. I'm basically running with those ideas so that, even if I never calculated those things like a computer did, I want the final output to evoke those same emotions anyway.
You should maybe start with a simple subject. The overall design of objects needs work. The cars are okay, trees are all the same shape/angle. Shadows don't make sense. Compositionally, there's a lot of no-no's. Start with the basics, and learn through observation.
I was hoping tomorrow I could finally show the new art, which will show why PBR is so important for this. But I don't want to rush it, so I'll keep practicing till I think it's ready.
As much as you want to insist that you're going to show what you mean, it's still just a still image. Artists learn about reflected light sources, ambient light sources etc so that they can mimic the real world. Learning how light and colour interact in the real world allows you to break these rules so as to give yourself the look you want to achieve.
As for critique, you need to learn more about colour theory. Thinking about how the sky colour affects your scene. What colour is the sky? What colour is the light? Why have I got a yellow hydrant in a place where there is no light that could allow it to be yellow? Why are the trees green in the shadow, when the ambient light seems to be blue?
You have every colour in there, but no dominant colours. A quick way to improve it would be to throw on a HSV adjustment layer, set it to colourize and set the layer opacity to 50%. Then you can adjust the hue, and see how the scene looks when it has an overall ambient colour.
Best of luck,
Adam
The original painting is now old and I have modified the scene immensely (it's now a scene that takes place at night!!!!!), however, I want to say something about the critique.
Before I started, I looked heavily for a lot of photo references that were similar in both the actual scene (Toronto King Street) and lighting set up. However, because this is also a cartoon, I did not want a complete 1:1 realistic look and so I played around with the values a lot until I got somewhere I thought matched my vision.
I've actually consider this a huge struggle as you can see I changed the paintings color theme twice in this thread (here and here).
See how the first one originally had a pink & blue motif compared to the later which offers slight more realism (white and darker blue)?
I want to be able balance a stylistic vision while also working with something that's "slightly" realistic. That's not to say I want to break all color rules or ignore color theory completely (quite the opposite. I made it a priority to look into concepts like color temperature or ambient light sources and strictly adhere to them).
As for the trees and hydrants appearing green and yellow, that's actually intentional. I didn't pick the colors but instead, I used 3DS Max to do it for me.
I made my own sort of "color constructor" but in 3DS Max, and I worked with the colors that the lighting created.
Again, the painting is old so I can't remember 100% how I got there, but I imagine it was a blue light source with some tweaks to the saturation.
Default
Blue lighting
The tree definitely looks more exaggerated or even strange, but I did have a photo reference that did have a "greenish" shadow still going for it.
for example,
You may score personal points getting it "correct" but if it doesn't look good whats the point?
again just to iterate, is there a reason you need to do all this to paint a picture? Cant you just observe from reference and say those leaves are green, they have sss so they go a bit yellow. booom paint those leaves green with a bit of yellow.
again maybe im just assuming....
Referencing 3DS Max's lighting in the viewport isn't that great. It essentially negates all of the important things about physical lighting. If you have a blueish light shining on a white object, then the object will appear pretty much the colour of the light. But what if you put an orange ball next to it? What colour is the orange ball in blue light, and therefore what colour is radiated off the orange ball onto the white ball? This is the essence of physical lighting. It's not just about absolute colour, but how objects and their materials interact with their environment.
Also, the reference you showed does highlight the practice you need. The reference tree you showed is in full sunlight, with light walls around it, and green grass underneath it. That tree is being lit from many different angles by the grass, the surrounding environment, the colour of the sun, and the ambient colour of the sky resulting in what you see. But the tree you've drawn is in shadow, with no direct lighting from a source of light that is white.
I also think you're misunderstanding hue in your colour theory. Shadows don't appear blue absolutely, they appear blue relatively. They are in most cases a less saturated version of their absolute colour. Imagine a colour wheel, instead of going around the circle, go across the circle.
You need to be more controlled with the use of colour. In real life you hardly ever see white or black, perfect red or perfect blue. You just think you do because of the relative colours surrounding it. Look out of your window and find something that is purely red, photograph it and then check the colour in photoshop. I guarantee you that you won't be able to find anything that is a perfect colour.
I was about to get to the next part!
The painting itself did not have any materials or complete lighting yet. It was all just diffuse colors with basic shadow casting. It was kind of like a guide till I actually began taking note of what materials are present in the scene and how lighting will truly affect them.
So I understand the complaints of it looking like "cel-shading" but my goal for this was never to look 100% flat (hence the "3D" I have written in the title).
Also, speaking of GI, I did actually run some tests in Max. But they were just very simple to see what color/light bouncing looks like.
But seriously you are making this so hard for yourself. If I remember correctly a while back you said you'd focus on making props for your portfolio(I might be wrong).Now when I look at your signature I see alot of threads that just amount to nothing and your portfolio has let's say 1 day worth of work?(I am not an env. artist so I don't know how long a barrel takes)Now I don't know you personally so I don't know if your goal has changed and you don't want to be a prop artist anymore but if you still strive towards that goal you should focus on it and less on side projects.I am not saying that you should stop drawing/painting because IMO it helps ALOT in 3d but you aren't really painting or drawing.Nobody cares if your painting is physically accurate if it looks bad.
I think it's time for you to choose what you want to do in the near future and this still applies if you are still in school(Are you?).If you want that prop job then put 90% of your time there.Build a VIOLENT portfolio and get stupid good at what you want to do. Employers won't go "That guy sure knows how to make good cartoon let's hire him to do our props". I think trying to match ps1 and make "pbr" cartoon is just wasting your time and taking you further from that job and I think I am not the first one to tell you that.
Again I don't personally know you, I don't know if you are working in a restaurant and living alone or living with your parents going to school but you have to ask yourself "Am I where I want to be in life?" and "Where do I want to go in life" and focus on that.My best advice also would be to stop worrying about "style",pbr and photo-realism and just make the best art you can within your capabilities.
I would have SO MUCH more to say but I feel this is turning into a wall of text. I am aware that this post is out of place and might get me some hate but I've been following you for some time and I felt like I needed to say it.
Sorry for bad english and good day Jordan.
stop beating a dead horse guys! let him do whatever he wants, he gets it, we all get it, this is not PBR.
but as long as he is painting and learning things thats awesome. we cant tell im to stop being silly and just do a simple project, and then every time he switches to a new project people in that thread are telling him he should stop doing that project. even though it might make sense or not, its sending very mixed messages xD
I dont think any of this youre doing is PBR, but that dosnt matter, I still think it looks pretty good, so just keep at it, good luck and im looking forward to your next post
By all means practice anything. I've never specialised, or gone down one route with my style, and my career is better for that.
Frankly you should drop the scope of what you're trying to do. Don't work on a street scene, work on just one of the cars.
Don't worry about what 3DS Max shows you, with respect you aren't yet experienced enough to render something life-like. Also don't render things for reference, Google is there for you to find reference of a 'cornel box'.
Also - learn about colour theory from a painters perspective, not a scientists. There is a reason that they refer to painters as 'Masters', because they have 'mastered' colour and light. All the knowledge about the science of light doesn't help you one bit with 2D art. Maybe as a technical artist for and effects house you would need to know these things, but at the end of the day all games and movies are designed at the concept phase, and this is often done by classically trained painters and artists because they know how to use colour effectively to drive story, or focus attention.
And think about it this way, if you can't paint a sphere in a cornel box, why are you trying to paint a street scene?
Sorry if I was misleading and good luck.
Here's new 3D concepts of a scene in W.I.P.
I like working on what interests me currently. Doesn't mean I stop working on older ones.
thats ok, keep it up, just wanted to know your thoughts. as long as your clear on when you are performing and when you are practicing. and make sure everyone else is too when you make posts
That art is cool but it's not something I really want to do.