3D Figure Paintings

[Xeofrios]

Make your 3D renders look like Digital Paintings (Walkthrough + Breakdown)

Thumbnail

This will my final post for this particular series. For a breakdown on the shader see this topic

NPR Skin Shader Showcase + Breakdown

Here is the most developed version of my procedural NPR skin shader. It has been through multiple iterations over my past NPR projects. I hope the information I provide here will be useful to you. Renders I will only be using the hand to display the shader. For full body renders, see this topic: The hand is from the official Human Base meshes Asset bundle by Blender Studio. Infact, the whole body and head is the realistic female body asset sculpted over and rigged. [image] [image] [image…

Here I will share some tips on matters other than shading.

What’s with the weird geometry in the Viewport Render?

Those are meant to be brush strokes bleeding out of the outline. You can notice them if you look at the final renders closely. They are simply cubes instanced on vertices at grazing angles with a volume material on. I think (and hope) they help with the painterly effect.

Outline

The outlines are done with geometry nodes. I extruded the edges between the faces towards the camera and those which are not. Quite simple actually.

Lighting

Point lights instanced in a circle with random colors. You can notice the colored shadows in some of the renders

Hair

I sculpted a simple base using the snake hook brush with dyntopo and drew some semi-transparent curves on it. It’s quite rough, but a Kuwahara filter simplifies the shapes.

Where is the character model from?

I sculpted over and rigged the realistic female model from the Blender Asset bundle. I hope to reuse the model in my future projects.

Demo Files — blender.org

Questions and suggestions are welcome.

[alekba (Alek)]

Great work. Stylized, yet realistic… or vice versa. Love to see background in same style.

[UndeadChains (Caleb Smith)]

Amazing breakdown! Quick question, how did you texture the outline? Did you texture the outline? In your renders it seems to have a darker color. My outlines are splotchy and sort of just the texture of the skin. I would want a solid darker color similar to yours.

[Xeofrios]

Apply a different material to the outline faces using the “side” output of the extrude node as a mask.

[vakukulkan]

Wow! It’s fantastic! So realistic!

[bartv (Bart Veldhuizen)]

I featured you on BlenderNation, have a great weekend!

Best of Blender Artists: 2023-41

[Xeofrios]

Thanks a lot Bart!