Freestyle for Blender

General Forums Blender and CG Discussions
#1

Hi all,

Just to let you know, we’ve posted an email to the Blender developers
ML about the possible integration of Freestyle into Blender, either
through a Google Summer of Code project or through… something else!
We also wanted to start this thread to let the artists community give
its feedback about this project, first because the idea came from this
community in the first place, so it’s only fair, and, also,
because this will help us and others judge whether there’s a real
interest in such an integration. This thread would also be the place
to formulate expectations, requests, questions, etc. about the
project.

Again, many thanks for all the nice feedback we’ve already had the
pleasure to read in these forums, it’s highly rewarding to see
Freestyle used by so many talented artists in spite of its current
lack of polish. :slight_smile:

Stephane & Emmanuel
http://freestyle.sourceforge.net

#2

Definitely a very interesting thing. It would expand Blenders possibilies and make Freestyle more accessible. I check the Freestyle site from time to time and think it can create very nice results. I only think that it lacks a bit on the render-quality (noises and anti-aliasing for instance). Also from what I know NPR and animation is a complete different beast (lines coherence and things like that). At the moment I use Sketch&Toon for Cinema4D but I wouldn’t mind to have another NPR in my toolset.

good luck

cheers,
Bob

#3

Hey, thats pretty cool stuff. It would be nice to have such an effect integrated int he renderer…

#4

best news i have heard all day, good luck and i hope this is approved… i really really really hope this is approved for the gs of c

#5

That would be awesome to have freestyle integrated into blender. NPR rules!

#6

very good idea… keep us updated!

#7

This would be really nice. Currently it’s not possible to get it to compile with current versions of GCC. The GCC is much more strict about C++ code being up to spec than it used to be, and fixing freestyle’s code would be your first big step.

Second, I’ve seen really nice renderings, but I’m willing to bet that animations would be very jumpy. Having smooth animation output from freestyle would be a really nice.

#8

Amazing
http://freestyle.sourceforge.net/GALLERY/GUIDING-LINES/model.php

#9

Stephane

:cool: This is the best news I’ve heard all day:cool:.
It’s really good to see you starting this thread.I’ve only had success renders with lowpoly 3ds output files,and Blender integration would help out a lot of artist.
I know it’s early but what are the best options for the style modules to work with Blender?Composite nodes,python script or,external render?
I read somewhere that you folks a needed a extra mind to help with putting Freestyle in,so GSOC seems like a good start.If this works out for just non animation,I’ll still be happy.

I thank you all for your time and efforts.

#10

FishB8 raises an interesting point: Currently nothing is done in Freestyle to maintain the temporal coherence from frame to frame. It is still possible to produce temporally coherent animation as long as your shaders rely on information that is itself temporally coherent (like 3D information) but any style based on a 2D parameterization of the line would probably be incoherent.
Bottom line, Freestyle will need to be improved even further to allow for full expressivity in animations.

Ronin: Thanks for your support, you’ve been great! As far as how the style modules would be integrated, it’s still early for me to say. I’ll take any suggestion though :slight_smile:

#11

This would be BRILLIANT as a composite node!!!

#12

YES!

Oh, today’s a good day. I’m getting all kinds of good news today. Jeez. I feel like I’m in a Bill Murray movie about a guy who gets too much good news in one day.

Seriously, I’ve been hoping for a thread with this title by you guys saying that you were thinking of doing this. Exactly what I’ve been waiting for. By all means, I sincerely wish you the very best on these plans.

#13

I have actually waiting for an integration of some sort since I heard of Freestyle. So, yes, I am all for this. Hell, if I knew how to code a lick, I would be helping.

#14

Awesome! Best of luck doing that!

#15

yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, YES! WOULD BE VERY WELCOMED RENDERER! (yesss!) :o

#16

Awesome news! Never used freestyle due to the complications involved with integration with
Blender. Something like this would really make me do a lot more NPR - which is great!!!:yes:

I really hope this gets done! Best wishes to the devs!
//Mathias

#17

two days with fantastic news…

yesterday news about motion tracking in blender

and

today news about freestyle in blender

thanx - thanx - thanx

#18

hey, this is fantastic news! Please take a look at manga studio ( for inspiration):eek: :eek:

http://www.e-frontier.com/go/products/mangastudio

#19

a question:
should it be just about line-rendering or also about sketch-shaders?

for line-rendering, my suggestions were: special pen-styles (marker, charcoal, pencil, ink, …), hidden-lines (eg: dotted lines for technical drawings), depth-influence (lines far away are thicker), maybe shader-based (ramps to controll color, alpha, and thickness)

for sketch-shaders, my suggestion were: hatch-shader (influenced by lightning or normals), dot-shader (like a news-paper), toon-shader (like the actual toon-shader)

for my part, i used the maya-internal toon-module - its shader are just ramp-based and its lines are a special way of outlining the model with a stroke and using the maya-paint-effects to render this stroke stamp-based.

i’m serious about that the community will help you a lot!

S.

#20

Great news, best news this year so far.!!

Freestyle in blender would be a fantastic addition. Animation or not.

Best of luck with this project and i hope a developer(s) step forward to help out and talented blender artists get behind the project producing stunning work to show it’s potential.