[Bf-funboard] Freestyle into Blender: Howto?

Michael Crawford psyborgue at mac.com
Thu Mar 8 14:08:35 CET 2007


On Mar 8, 2007, at 2:20 AM, Stéphane Grabli wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Freestyle NPR is a procedural renderer that produces
> line-drawings from 3D models:
>
> http://freestyle.sourceforge.net
>
> Recently, a project aiming at integrating Freestyle
> to blender was initiated.
> In this context, we are seeking advices from people familiar
> with Blender as to how such integration would best happen.
> Ideally, since Freestyle only produces contour lines (currently as
> 2D triangle strips living in image space), its output
> would easily be composited (in a way or another) to other
> rendered elements such as shadows, objects interiors etc.
>
> In short: How should a contour-line renderer be integrated
> to Blender?

Well.  I think the compositing node was a really bad idea (like I  
said on the dev-board).  Blender, as it is, is pretty organized.  I  
do stuff in 3d, i render it, it goes to the compositor, from there to  
the sequencer, compressor etc.  As it is  (AFAIK), apart from the  
"defocus" node, the compositor is completely cut off from the 3d  
environment. ( for example: one problem with the compositing node  
approach: setting multiple material settings in blender isn't  
possible, you have to switch renderers to see all the options) Maybe  
that could change?  It probably should.  But I think that would be a  
much larger project than incorporating a renderer.

What I think should happen?  Just integrate freestyle as another  
renderer.  Why?

As it is, Blender supports using multiple renderers in the  
compositor. If I want to use separate renderers in a composite, I  
have to either use either images, or separate scenes.  This works for  
the most part and can be very useful since seperate scenes can have  
linked data.   It is a bit unwieldy to newcomers and not an obvious  
option for people to use, but then again, most beginners won't be  
compositing.  Using a linked scene also allows me to set material  
options etc seperately (override materials) on different "scenes" by  
switching the material link from "ME" (block) to "OB" (object).  I  
could specify different objects to be rendered, add things etc.  The  
possibilities are far less limited than merely creating a compositing  
node that dumps all objects on the user with little options to change  
shading "look".

Most people think of Layers>Passes, not Scenes(renderer) 
 >Layers>passes, but as it is in Blender, however, it works! and I  
like it.

So there's my case.  I just didn't want to say that on the dev-board  
and start a debate.

>
> Thanks!
>
> Stephane & Emmanuel
>
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