Brain Attack pulp style cover using brain bots, pipes and tanks. Looking closer
to a '70's magazine cover than the late 50's pulp book. Added text and stylized
in Photoshop. Final rendering done in 16K to get better line/edge effect in PS.
Miller.

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
Download 'brain_attack.jpg' (2715 KB)

Preview of image 'brain_attack.jpg'

Op 5-8-2023 om 20:20 schreef Mike Miller:
> Brain Attack pulp style cover using brain bots, pipes and tanks. Looking closer
> to a '70's magazine cover than the late 50's pulp book. Added text and stylized
> in Photoshop. Final rendering done in 16K to get better line/edge effect in PS.
> Miller.

I love this! Also your separate "how to" images which, by the way, show 
the same graphic quality as the finished product. And same applies to 
your sketches too.

-- 
Thomas

Post a reply to this message

"Mike Miller" <mil### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Brain Attack pulp style cover using brain bots, pipes and tanks. Looking closer
> to a '70's magazine cover than the late 50's pulp book. Added text and stylized
> in Photoshop. Final rendering done in 16K to get better line/edge effect in PS.
> Miller.

Wow that's awesome Mike, It all came together great!

Post a reply to this message

"19100" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> "Mike Miller" <mil### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> > Brain Attack pulp style cover using brain bots, pipes and tanks. Looking closer
> > to a '70's magazine cover than the late 50's pulp book. Added text and stylized
> > in Photoshop. Final rendering done in 16K to get better line/edge effect in PS.
> > Miller.
>
> Wow that's awesome Mike, It all came together great!

Thanks.
It's a fun theme/art style to work on. Old sci-fi cover art inspires me - the
campier the better. :) Below is a link to some really early covers.
Mike.

https://www.pulpmagazines.org/pulp-magazines-to-read/

Post a reply to this message

"Mike Miller" <mil### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Brain Attack pulp style cover using brain bots, pipes and tanks. Looking closer
> to a '70's magazine cover than the late 50's pulp book. Added text and stylized
> in Photoshop. Final rendering done in 16K to get better line/edge effect in PS.
> Miller.

/It Came From a Lab!/ (and without proper authorization)

It's looking great, Mike! It could possibly benefit from a half-tone effect,
imo, to give it a magazine cover look. And perhaps greater atmospheric
perspective to make the foreground pop a bit more.

Are you using any reflection blurring? UberPOV supports it, but it's really slow
to render. I sometimes entertain the idea of making my own fork of UberPOV to
allow the number of blur samples to be set to a lower value, in order for them
to be multiplied by camera blur samples and AA whilst keeping the render times
lowish. But it's probably a lot of work...

Anyway, I'm looking forward to see what you produce next!~

Sam

Post a reply to this message

"Mike Miller" <mil### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Brain Attack pulp style cover using brain bots, pipes and tanks. Looking closer
> to a '70's magazine cover than the late 50's pulp book. Added text and stylized
> in Photoshop. Final rendering done in 16K to get better line/edge effect in PS.
> Miller.

Pretty cool PS post-render effects.

I'm wondering what can be done in that respect directly in POV-Ray,

but also wondering if you could make a few ancillary renders that are in that
black-and white pen/line-drawing cross-hatched style of illustration to make a
few companion scenes.

- BW

Post a reply to this message

"Samuel B." <stb### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> "Mike Miller" <mil### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> > Brain Attack pulp style cover using brain bots, pipes and tanks. Looking closer
> > to a '70's magazine cover than the late 50's pulp book. Added text and stylized
> > in Photoshop. Final rendering done in 16K to get better line/edge effect in PS.
> > Miller.
>
> /It Came From a Lab!/ (and without proper authorization)
>
> It's looking great, Mike! It could possibly benefit from a half-tone effect,
> imo, to give it a magazine cover look. And perhaps greater atmospheric
> perspective to make the foreground pop a bit more.
>
> Are you using any reflection blurring? UberPOV supports it, but it's really slow
> to render. I sometimes entertain the idea of making my own fork of UberPOV to
> allow the number of blur samples to be set to a lower value, in order for them
> to be multiplied by camera blur samples and AA whilst keeping the render times
> lowish. But it's probably a lot of work...
>
> Anyway, I'm looking forward to see what you produce next!~
>
> Sam

Thanks,
I'm not using reflection blurring but might be able to fake it a bit in post.
Rendering times could be a problem. I'm rendering in multiple passes with and
without reflections to control the art effects/edging. I'm looking at adding
more atmosphere/effects as I flush these out. I have a bit a gas leak effect
in the attached view. I'll be adding more background to this one... work in
progress. :)

Yes, a half-tone effect! ...I might play with that and maybe some chromatic
aberrations. I also have some distress maps for aging that might work well to
add some vintage.
Best regards,
Mike.

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
Download 'brain_attack_2.jpg' (1410 KB)

Preview of image 'brain_attack_2.jpg'

"Bald Eagle" <cre### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> "Mike Miller" <mil### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> > Brain Attack pulp style cover using brain bots, pipes and tanks. Looking closer
> > to a '70's magazine cover than the late 50's pulp book. Added text and stylized
> > in Photoshop. Final rendering done in 16K to get better line/edge effect in PS.
> > Miller.
>
> Pretty cool PS post-render effects.
>
> I'm wondering what can be done in that respect directly in POV-Ray,
>
> but also wondering if you could make a few ancillary renders that are in that
> black-and white pen/line-drawing cross-hatched style of illustration to make a
> few companion scenes.
>
> - BW

Thanks,
>> black-and white pen/line-drawing cross-hatched
Good thought...I'll run a few and upload for comparison. If I had a large format
printer, I could hand draw the edges and shading as a vellum overlay
- overtop of the printed POV rendering.

Not sure how to get the edge and cel-shade look directly from POV. Yesbird was
working on some type of POV cartoon shader look, I think?

Attached is styled with posterized shadows with a 1/2 tone process dot per Sam's
suggestion - thanks Sam. I'm liking the comic book feel. I also removed the
reflection pass to reduce the busyness, especially in the pipes. Will continue
to play with this.
Mike.

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
Download 'brain_attack_posterized.jpg' (2049 KB)

Preview of image 'brain_attack_posterized.jpg'

"Mike Miller" <mil### [at] gmailcom> wrote:

> >> black-and white pen/line-drawing cross-hatched
> Good thought...I'll run a few and upload for comparison. If I had a large format
> printer, I could hand draw the edges and shading as a vellum overlay
> - overtop of the printed POV rendering.
>
> Not sure how to get the edge and cel-shade look directly from POV. Yesbird was
> working on some type of POV cartoon shader look, I think?

There are things like Canny edge detection, as well as better and more refined
versions of convolution kernels (Sobel operator, etc.)

Not sure about cel shading (might try things like the Anisotropic Kuwahara
Filter, etc.) - what I was suggesting is more a hatching-style shading of the
image, such as used in the old Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift... (see
attached)

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
Download 'monochrome_be_sketch.png' (615 KB)

Preview of image 'monochrome_be_sketch.png'

"Mike Miller" <mil### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> "Bald Eagle" <cre### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
> > "Mike Miller" <mil### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> > > Brain Attack pulp style cover using brain bots, pipes and tanks. [...]
> >
> > Pretty cool PS post-render effects.
> >
> > I'm wondering what can be done in that respect directly in POV-Ray, [...]
>
> Not sure how to get the edge and cel-shade look directly from POV.

One idea for the outlines is to build a new object out of several copies, like
so (I attached an image of the result):

#declare Obj =
 union{
  #local W = .3;
  #local Obj_ =
   merge{
    cylinder{-x, x, W}
    sphere{-x, W}
    sphere{x, W}
   }
  object{Obj_}
  object{Obj_ rotate y*90}
  object{Obj_ rotate z*90}
 }

// object without outlines
object{
 Obj
 pigment{rgb .7}
}

// outlines
merge{
 // change these two things
 #local NPts = 8;
 #local LineThickness = 0.03;

 // golden spiral points on sphere
 #local Inc = pi * (3 - sqrt(5));
 #local Off = 2 / NPts;
 #local Seed = seed(1001);
 #for(K, 0, NPts-1)
  #local Y = K * Off - 1 + (Off / 2);
  #local R = sqrt(1 - Y*Y);
  #local Phi = K * Inc;
  object{
   Obj
   translate LineThickness*<cos(Phi)*R, Y, sin(Phi)*R>
  }
 #end
 texture{pigment{rgbt 1}}
 interior_texture{pigment{rgb 0}}
 interior{ior 1.0001}
 no_shadow
 no_reflection
}

^That technique requires some things to be merged.

Another idea is to keep using whatever post-process effect you have been using
up til now, but feed it a simpler image without reflections, shadows, etc. Maybe
give it an image rendered with +q0 or something. The problem with that, however,
is some areas will not have lines because the adjacent colors will be the same.
The only fix I know for that is to give different areas slightly different
colors, so that the line algorithm has something to work with. (I hope that
makes sense ;P)

> Attached is styled with posterized shadows with a 1/2 tone process dot per Sam's
> suggestion - thanks Sam. I'm liking the comic book feel. I also removed the
> reflection pass to reduce the busyness, especially in the pipes. Will continue
> to play with this.
> Mike.

It's looking good!

Sam

Post a reply to this message

Attachments:
Download 'basicobjectoutline.jpg' (18 KB)

Preview of image 'basicobjectoutline.jpg'