Prince Edward Island, Canada --- The land of lawn tractors
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Some of you might find this software interesting. It is called Piranesi - it's a 3d paint program. It is for creating non-realistic renderings of 3d models that were created in your program of choice. Although marketed mostly to architects and interior designers it can facilitate impressive renderings of almost any type of 3d model. For instance, I can picture Jens' product designs looking great rendered with this program.
The site has an downloadable presentation that is worth looking at. Unfortunately it is for version 2 whilst a more feature-packed version 3 of the program has just been released. I sense that it is a very flexible program although the demo makes it look a little "stiff".
The program sells for about US $750. Unfortunately it doesn't have a demo version. I feel like writing them to encourage a proper demo - in this current market I think they are really putting the brakes on their success by expecting people to buy the program without getting to try it first.
Prince Edward Island, Canada --- The land of lawn tractors
Posts
5,389
Some of you might find this software interesting. It is called Piranesi - it's a 3d paint program. It is for creating non-realistic renderings of 3d models that were created in your program of choice. Although marketed mostly to architects and interior designers it can facilitate impressive renderings of almost any type of 3d model. For instance, I can picture Jens' product designs looking great rendered with this program.
The site has an downloadable presentation that is worth looking at. Unfortunately it is for version 2 whilst a more feature-packed version 3 of the program has just been released. I sense that it is a very flexible program although the demo makes it look a little "stiff".
The program sells for about US $750. Unfortunately it doesn't have a demo version. I feel like writing them to encourage a proper demo - in this current market I think they are really putting the brakes on their success by expecting people to buy the program without getting to try it first.
By coincidence I just got the program Version2. My first impression, IMPRESSIVE. True, it's mainly for architectural use. But I do not see any reason why others shouldn't use and discover possibilities with the apps.
I work in an archi firm though I am not an architect. I do architectural renderings and perspectives as well Autocad archi designs. My other life is graphics and advertising.
I am yet to discover Piranesi's potentials. Yes you have to use a conventional modelling app to create the 3dmodel. This is converted into Piranesi's file format (.epx file). If the app can't do so, there's Vedute, a program supplied with Piranesi that convert the file.
Vedute itself is good. One can rotate the object in order to get the desired plane. Now I have to figure out how to import Autocad files and scanned drawings.
It's basically a paint program with a twist - textured brushes, filters, blend control and grain reminisce of Photoshop. It uses smart brushes meaning it paints over selected planes.
That's as far as I could go. I'll upload a few sample images from Piranesi.
vee
[This message was edited by dv8_fx on May 29, 2002 at 10:21.]
Prince Edward Island, Canada --- The land of lawn tractors
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Your enthusiasm made me go have another look at the features of the new version here. I hope others will check out the 'panorama' example that is done in Quicktime. It is stunning how it puts you inside a watercolour!
The styles of renderings presented very much relate to traditional natural-media architectural renderings. I wonder how such renderings are received by non-architectural modellers? I suspect for most, a photo-realistic approach has been their goal since day one - and they have never really considered non-realistic rendering approaches in the context of 3d computer graphics. It may be hard for them to get their head around how this approach could be used in their own work.
It seems to me that until the user base of Piranesi grows to include non-architectural modellers, the true creative potential of the program won't be realized. Clearly its developers see it as architectural software. Consequently their marketing is directed to the architectural world which is actually quite a small market. I'd love to see some cars, boats, airplanes, landscapes, toys, shoes, salt&pepper shakers, dragons rendered in Piranesi! Those would really highlight whatever flexibility is or isn't part of the program.
How 'bout it 3d'ers? Could you ever see yourself intentionally creating non-realistic renderings? What are your thoughts on this question?
Prince Edward Island, Canada --- The land of lawn tractors
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If I understand Vee correctly - the examples aren't his work - they are from the Piranesi marketing site.
What you are seeing in the examples is regular 3d models rendered with Piranesi. You create your model in whatever program you like to model in and then bring the model into Piranesi. From what I've seen the process of getting results, like the examples, is relatively simple. Actually it is impressively simple. It seems to be one of those rare programs were the developers have successfully re-thought an accepted approach and come up with an elegant solution that is simple yet remains powerful. Studying the program, I was struck that it seems like someone with no computer experience could actually take a model and render it as successfully as Vee's examples.
I really would like to know what the non-architectural folks think about the potential of this program. For instance, I'd love to see Ron Pfister's Tractor rendered as per the Piranesi example I attach. (It is from the Piranisi website - it uses a style they call "pencil halftone").
yes, Piranesi **is** a great software. However, with C4D and it's countless renderoptions plus PhotoPaint and some filters you can achieve similar effects in no time as well.
This example:
Rendered hi res, imported into Xara X, converted to greyscale, adjusted brightness and contrast with Intellihence, applied a grain filter from FilterFactory,
added a brown rectangle, made it 70% transparent, rendered a cartoon version of the pic in hi res, placed in on top of all, applied 'luminosity' in Xara X.
Result: looks like a pencil outline filled with a sepia tone cotton ball paint.
ok, this was just for the fun of it. I wish I could afford the Piranesi right now, but I have to invest the funds into new goal.
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