NPR images Tutorial - by Rick Eloy

I know a lot of people already have developed their own techniques, but I decide to share mine. In our business, it's not hard to find a client who doesn't want (or doesn't expect) a photo-real image of his design. What should we do? Abandon our beloved computer, our mastered software and try to become painters from night to day? My choice is not to. But I don't want to miss a client just because of such a small detail... So here it goes. This is how I make a NPR image out of my regular renderings.

First of, I took a regular rendering. I chose this one because of the 4th CGArchitect.com Contest, so it has nothing special besides that. Thanks to Paul Griger for the model!

Of course, this technique works a lot better on "not that realistic" images, because most painters can't achieve the same result as we do with some Lightscape or so.

Anyway, after picking up an image, open it with Photoshop. The first step is to create a new layer, painted in solid white, above the original image. That done, change it's opacity to 50%. You'll get something like this:

We did that in order to be able to see what parts of the original image we are "painting".

Now comes the "painting" part. Regular painters use brushes. We are going to use an eraser! The concept here is really simple. By erasing the "white layer", we will pretend we are painting, creating the layer bellow. Strange? Check this out:

First, we choose a brush to use with the eraser tool. I chose the "Watercolour" brush (the one with number 32). If they're not already checked, check options above. Your brush will look like mine (but this is a personal choice, further on you can decide which settings to use). You should also change the "strenght" of the eraser to 50%, to give a more natural effect. Now, we can start painting.

Erase the border of the image with only one stroke. Make sure you erase it in a way it looks like hand made. You'll see that it looks very pale, since part of the white layer is still there. Now, with another stroke, erase the middle. It will have the same effect as I achieved above, i.e., some parts of the image will appear darker than others. Just like if you had painted it. Now, a special touch. The canvas texture.

I decided to use it here just because it's a built in filter. Everybody has it. Go to Filter > Texture > Texturizer... Set it as bellow:

This is pretty much an automatic action, so I won't go any deeper. Now, your image looks just almost done. I said almost because now you will give it personality.

What makes one painting different from the others is the way the artist paints it. So far, this painting of ours looks just ok, but not like if someone had really painted it. Now, we are going to give it the personal touch (and have a little fun). Using the Burn Tool, we can emulate darker strokes, as if you were really painting it, and highlight the parts we want.

First, flatten the image. Use the same brush you've been using so far (you can change the size, but the shape should be the same). Now go to the parts you want and apply the strokes at will. My image got like this:

Note that the exposure is set to 10%, so it becomes more subtle and natural. Play around with it until you get the results that most satisfy you (or your client).

That's it. Hope you enjoyed this tutorial as much as I enjoyed writing it.

If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail me at ricardo@rebdigital.com.br

By the way, this tutorial has been featured on CGArchitect.com, CADburg (russian only) and Vocanson Multimedia.