[Bf-blender-npr] Blender Edge Tracing.

[Lino Grandi]

Hi,
my name is Lino Grandi and I've been working to the development of
LightWave 3D for several years now.

My adventure with LightWave has finally come to an end, and I started
to use Blender for my projects.

I'm very excited about version 2.79, and can't wait for 2.8, which in
my opinion can really sign the 3D market in some impressive ways and
be a huge game changer.
That's why I'm doing my best to push LightWave users towards Blender,
a software that really deserves to find always more space in any 3D
pipeline out there.

What an awesome story you started when you gave Blender to light!
Thanks for that.

As an artist, my main focus has always been cel shading.

This is an animation I made to test the Cel Shading features in
LightWave 2018 (I highly contributed to those):

https://youtu.be/VKdsPs2aZPc?list=PLB3BfyCgNB3tjs1HEHZhWjPSPb4vdqnIw

I've also worked on the teaser for a production that should start this
year. I'll be the 3D Technical Director for the animated movie.
I've been developing the following video (which is absultely private,
so I can't share it for now) using LightWave 2018, while it was in
development.

I really would like to be able to use Blender for this production (it
should start in April 2018).

I'm getting very excited by how Grease Pencil has and will be improved
in this cycle, and I'm a huge fan of Daniel Martinez Lara!
2D animators are going to be thrilled by what Grease Pencil will allow
for in Blender 2.8!

Coming from LightWave2018, what I really miss in Blender is a proper
Toon material and a fast and fully featured edge tracer.

FreeStyle is very slow and doesn't provide any intersection edge option.

Here you can see how well LightWave deals with Edges in the render:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHK5d42uzM8

In your "Blender projects in 2018 to look forward to" post (thank you
for that, so great to have had this glance into the future of Blender)
I've read that FreeStyle will need a total rewrite for Blender2.8.

I really hope this will lead to a different approach to edge rendering
in Blender, possibly very similar to the one implemented in
LightWave2018, which is not a post process, but a very fast real
time/interactive generation of the edges.

An alternative to FreeStyle (or a new version able to interact with
the render in real time and not as a post process) would let me use
Blender in my next cel shaded productions.

If there's any way I can help to make this happen, well, I would be
totally available to provide any needed information, testing and
feedback.

Thank you for your time and for this awesome digital miracle called Blender.


I wish you the best for this New Year!

My best regards.

-- 

Lino Grandi