It's Not Rocket Science! by George Peter Gatsis - Bringing 3D And 2D Together.

[Rich Johnston]

George Peter Gatsis writes for Bleeding Cool;

Greetings everyone. This is one of my characters, Joe King... No seriously... and don't call him Sheryl.



Joe is hanging around a tropical planet that's pretending to be a sun.( Long story short: the universe is overrun with monsters that eat planets. So the planets disguised themselves as suns. Think of a spicy, peppery pizza... with just spicy peppers and no water in sight... yummy. )



These are Joe's friends in a spaceship... in 3D space.( trust me they are in there... they just happen to be playing poker at this time. )



There are wonderful 3D programs out there like MAYA and 3D Studio MAX, which are purchasable items...and Google SketchUp and my new hero on the block... Blender... which are FREE!

Oops!! Forgot to turn off the wireframe.



There that's better.

If Joe and his friends would come together right now, it wouldn't be a good thing.Reality would collapse! The universe will explode! All existence will vanish... or worse.They just don't look like they belong together.



So what in the name of William Shanter do we do? Is there a transporter that can take apart the very fabric of the two different realities and bring them together?

Why, yes Lois... there is.



We have to render the 3D artwork with a POSTERIZING effect.All the 3D programs out there now are quite a bit in common with each other...For one thing... they all open and save files.Another is that they can change up the gradation of the colors of light and shadow to simplified TOON.

Wait WHAT!!? That's crazy! Why would you simplify an awesome rendering of a spaceship? You'll loose all that wonderful detail and look and stuff!

Ah... but we are going to simplify it AND keep all the detail.

That's impossible! I still think you are crazy.

It's not crazy for the Manga or Anime stuff that we all love right from birth.



What we have here is the POSTERIZING effect applied to the 3D geometry... or TOONED rendering ( with an ALPHA MASK )...





That's nice... but where are the black lines that hold this reality together... and thereby bringing Joe and his friends together?

We must render another file ( with an ALPHA MASK )... a if-you-will... a 60s era love, peace and all that jazzy stuff kinda file!



Here we have a second render with all the different geometry given a distinctly different color.Almost all the colors in the different geometry don't overlap on each other... THIS IS IMPORTANT.



We are going to combine these two different dimensions of color files to create the blacklines that hold the artwork together and re-unite Joe and his friends.

We start off by bringing both renders into Photoshop... and layering one on top of the other.

WAIT WHY PHOTOSHOP!?? Why not some other program? And how can I get out of this chicken army?

Secure that chicken Hudson! You can use another image editing program... But for this demo... we are doing it in Photoshop.

In photoshop there is a wonderful filter called FIND EDGES.



Once you engage this filter on an unsuspecting layer all things begin... to be glorious!





That's okay... I think I see where you are going with this...



We adjust the levels of the artwork to make everything that is not white... BLACK! ( dramatic drum noise: dum, dum, dum, duuummmm! )

Yes, but there are lines that don't connect around the ship. What do we do oh great and powerful gaa-zoo!!!

This is where we use the selection of the ALPHA MASK and put a stroke around the ship.













Then we merge the black line artwork with the posterized rendering.



But the lines don't all connect! What do we do?



Simple, just touch up the little bits of area with a simple brush stroke... and THERE YOU ARE!!!

Joe's friends have just made the transition from 3D space to 2D space... and nobody spilled their hot beverages in the process.



That's nice... Hanging out in negative space looks okay... but where is the planet disguised as a sun?



Oops... here it is.



And here is all three of them in the same reality... THE UNIVERSE IS SAVED!

Brought to you by, the number 7, the letter U and a generous helping of spicy pizza!

Sincerely,

Sincerely,

George Peter Gatsis

[ColonelLee]

I have used Google Sketchup to design things (not comic things, real things) .. it's a great tool anyone can use ..

in this example .. I like the drawing with the big red X over it .. better than the final product .. 3D and 2D can live together .. in fantasy at least .. been going on for a long time in the movies ..

[fredmanson]

Greatly and simply explained tip for 3D objects to be used in a 2D scene. Excellent!!

For the 3D tools, between Google Ketchup (free) and Blender (free), I counsel to use Ketchup for the newcomers. It is more practicable than Blender which request to learn the screen ergonomic and some tools not easy to understand for a newbie.

For the 2D software, you can use Photoshop (License... to kill your credit card!!), Paint Shop Pro (License... to bleed your credit card!!) or GIMP (free). As I am using Photoshop (yes, I have a true license!!), I counsel to a newbie to try Paint Shop Pro and GIMP first, then to try (for 30 days) Photoshop. Then, you can make your choice for the software that you are the most easy with.

A tip: it's very useless to pay for the very last version of Photoshop if it is your choice and that you REALLY WANT TO BUY IT. You can always buy an "old" license from Ebay or other auction/second hands web sites. That is what I have done!! I have the version 7 than the last CS version for my Mac (yep, I am a Mac user too!!! *cough* *cough* geek!! ).

A second tip: you can download the GIMP-PAINTER version which brings you more tools that the classical GIMP version.

(In case you are asking which 3D softwares I use: Blender for the most complex scenes, Ketchup for the basic structures and soon to come, Houdini Apprentice - free to use and with some limitations, then a true Houdini ApprenticeHD license to replace Blender. For the 2D software, I use Photoshop - just for some points, Painter - mostly and it is a true license, and MyPAINT - an excellent free software which is like Painter but much more easy to use. Do not forget to look at some graphic tablet. I have a Bamboo Wacom which is perfect when you do not have enough space to work - my dream: the Wacom Cintiq 24HD!!!!... Please!!! Help a comic book/illustration artist!!!! Gimme your money!!!)

[Fysh]

Some excellent advice there - interestingly, I would imagine that if folks are minded to use packages like Poser they could also use this sort of advice to get a more traditional animation effect.

One piece of advice I would throw out there, though, is to consider spending a little time learning how to use Paint.NET - it's a suprisingly good and powerful free Windows raster image editing package. It's not quite as good as Photoshop Elements (and obviously comes nowhere close to a full Photoshop install) but for an awful lot of what you need to do to get comic art ready, it does the job. There's a very active community who develop plugins for it, including one very handy one for supporting PSDs. It's biggest letdown is the text tool, which isn't yet up to scratch compared to commercial packages.

[Matt Spatola]

This guy is the best columnist Bleeding Cool has.

[Fysh]

This guy is the best columnist Bleeding Cool has.

I know, right? Useful advice provided in a very coherent fashion and devoid of the usual clicktrolling guff that the site's columnists so often go for.

Sadly, I suspect that will mean the column's already in the crosshairs Why read something interesting with useful information and advice when you can look at yet another post about a porn parody film, or fifteen different posts about the Next Marvel event, or several posts about something as boring as DC's logo change?

[tbdeinc]

For the 2D software, you can use Photoshop (License... to kill your credit card!!), Paint Shop Pro (License... to bleed your credit card!!) or GIMP (free).

That is funny stuff!!!

GPG

[_OM_]

This guy is the best columnist Bleeding Cool has.

...He's one of the few who can speak rendering on my level, that's for sure. One tip tho: I've found when compositing images like this, sometimes you'll get a better effect if you do a 1-pixel feather on the mask so as so just slightly blur the edge between the object in question and the background layer. It's not always necessary, so YMMV.

[fredmanson]

That is funny stuff!!!

Thanks a lot!!!

For the Painter license, I have bough an educational license from Ebay. It runs either on a PC than on a Mac. So, the less money I have spend in legal softwares (I do not use pirated softwares), the more I can spend in the computer material and in the tutorials DVDs/books.

Not all books are essentials, put this in your mind. The main book you must buy is an anatomy book for artists. Reproduce a lot of the given examples and change the position of the body parts, so you will greatly improve your skill in anatomy movements. After, you can put your characters in a scene with the help of one or two books about "How to draw comic books" but focused on how to place and use the space in the panels.

For the colors, as I am loving to digitally paint my drawings, I have bough books about true painting techniques focused on the points I needed. I regret to not have done an artistic class (my father has always considered that it was a lack of time and a not "politically correct job"...). If you can buy some hours for an artistic teaching, do it!!! You will never regret it!!!

One more thing: copying the drawing arts of an author is OK. You will learn HOW the drawing was done. Then you will apply step by step your own vision of HOW I AM DRAWING ANYTHING. No method is better than the other. Chose the one in which you feel yourself the best. And do not fear to learn other methods in the years to come. It is a normal step of your artistic evolution.

For example, I am learning the Terry Moore (Strangers in Paradise, Echo, Rachel Rising) way to draw a character and I really love it. Despite the fact that I have... ahem... *cough* 30 years *cough* of drawing behind me.

And to finish, I will always repeat what I have learned in a multimedia professional classroom years back, and thanks a lot to the teacher: "It is useless to have the last software and computer material if you do not feel right with them. You will never be pleased to do your job. Do not fear to try and try a lot of software to find the software in which you will feel the best because you will be the best in using it and you will feel pleasure to work with it".

[tbdeinc]

For those who might be wondering what this technique look like on a 3D character...

Have a look at this...

http://www.georgepetergatsis.com/blo...characters.jpg





The lines vary from the 3 characters because they were created for different compositions and sizes... they were brought here together with the magic of layers and pixie dust!


GPG