Jot – interesting NPR software

I am getting my feet wet in Blender and the aspect I am most interested in is NPR (Non-Photorealistic Rendering), as evidenced by this post on Freestyle renderer for example. I don’t claim to have any spectacular results yet, but I am following up on different NPR-related news and slowly experimenting with NPR techniques in Blender to be able to make a mixed 2D/3D animation based on my best friend’s art one day.

So far, I have very high expectations concerning Freestyle – I am following the development blog, watching others’ videos and playing with new builds myself (yes, the results are not special, I know). But there was an interesting forum post on Blender artists that caught my eye some time ago – concerning other NPR program called Jot, the source of which has been made public.

The program itself is hardly usable, onee would need to compile it from scratch and even though I officially am a C++ programer, the process turned out to be requiring too much time for me to continue. But the results that can be obtained with Jot seem quite spectacular indeed, as can be observed in the following video:

You can read more about Jot on quite outdated project webpage. Maxime and TK from Freestyle project have expressed cautious interest in checking Jot’s source code and perhaps integrating some of the solutions within Freestyle – but after they are done with current project goals, which I hope we’ll see this year.

Freestyling in Blender

Long time ago when I still was a student, I had time and lacked principles (it’s the other way round now, yay for being adult…). Back then I have been playing with pirated 3D Studio MAX and Illustrate! plugin. This combination allowed for creating sophisticated cartoon renderings, way more advanced than just regular cel shading options available in 3DS:

I assume that if you are reading this blog, you must at least have heard about Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex – this anime was also done using the combination of 3DS MAX and Illustrate!

At some point in my life I have decided to stop pirating software, movies and music. I still occasionally download a cool song or a movie, but I moved forward to using only legal software and paying for cultural goods I consume. From that point on, software such as 3D Studio MAX has become unavailable to me due to its cost. I am not a professional, I do not intend to make a profit from using it and the price tag is way above my financial level.

But I still have this little dream of creating a short animated movie, mixing 3D and 2D, and this is where Blender steps in. Blender is a 3D creation program that has more than enough options for a home user – I have written about it at least a couple of times and indeed I do have a soft spot for it. Some people (cough, Wojciech Orliński, cough) might laugh at free software, claiming it is inferior to commercial programs, and to some extent they are right (although not always so) – but for millions of students and folks from developing countries all around the world, this is a good and legal alternative.

Unfortunately, Blender has always been quite far behind 3D Studio MAX in the cel shading department. Yes, it was possible, there were some tutorials showing how to use it and whatnot, but it was all limited and difficult to use. The results wouldn’t be anything that could really threaten Illustrate! plugin.

While googling furiously for something with more potential, I have found Freestyle project. At the time it was barely usable. Perhaps someone with more skills and time on their hands than me might have managed to make it work – I didn’t. But the sample renderings from the project gallery were quite cool indeed:

Renaissance sketching style

Technical drawing
(compare with similar Illustrate! image above)

Japanese painting style

I have been patiently waiting for Freestyle to be incorporated in Blender ever since, checking back every now and then, when just recently – tada! – it has finally happened. As you can read in this post, Freestyle is being integrated with Blender. You can download the latest Freestyle-flavoured version from GraphicAll (just look for Freestyle branch). The process of setting the whole thing up is made easier thanks to a proper tutorial (download the PDF here). I haven’t given it a try myself yet, but the results look really promising, making Freestyle more reasonable alternative to Illustrate! for home users:

So go watch more videos in the aforementioned post and keep an eye on the project on the official development blog. I am really excited for Freestyle – I guess I might be doing my animation one day after all…