Luxology launched its new NPR Kit for modo – a non-photorealistic rendering package that allows for hand-drawn looks and animations to be achieved in 3D renderings. With this new kit, modo 601 users can access classic art styles when rendering anything from product visualizations to anime and fine art.
“Pushing the boundaries of 3D rendering back to a traditional look delivers an organic feel that resonates with people,” said Yazan Malkosh, beta tester and founder of 9b Studios. “The NPR Kit cleverly juxtaposes the 3D medium with a 2D look, so you can show your audience something that is both new and familiar.”
With material options for ‘toon shading, stippling, halftones, and edge rendering, the NPR Kit can be used for representations of architecture, products and characters in modo. The NPR Kit can mimic traditional styles like blueprints, sketches and chalk drawings, where edges and other important features are emphasized at the expense of detailed visual accuracy, or on cartoon productions, where solid colors and strong lines are used to convey emotion.
“The NPR Kit brings familiar 2D styles back to the table,” said Bob Bennett, VP of marketing for Luxology. “The ability to emphasize the edge, color and pattern details of 3D models with a range of traditional looks really extends the creative options for modo designers and artists.”
The eight shaders included in the NPR Kit offer great artistic control, as exemplified by the SketchTone shader. This shader uses hand-sketched hatching examples to map an artist’s personal drawing style to a 3D surface. High priority strokes appear even where there is little shading, while lower priority strokes are filled in later as the shading grows darker. This technique reproduces the hand-drawn quality of the strokes used and also the artist’s own interpretation of the surface.
The NPR Kit also includes pre-built materials, still and animated backgrounds, sample NPR scenes, Sketchmaps and tutorials.
