Best free NPR tool out there
Freestyle has certainly come a long way since I first wrote about it. Two years ago it was an obscure script that could produce nice results on condition that user was proficient with Blender, had some knowledge about Python scripting and was determined enough to do quite a bit of trial and error. I covered Freestyle back then, because it was a free alternative to commercial products, but frankly, for an average Blender user, it was unusable.
Fast forward to 2010, Freestyle is now functioning inside Blender (in special builds available from GraphicAll.org), with full graphical interface and a large number of parameters to customize the line output, such as variable thickness, color, line ending and dash spacing. The whole project is on its way to be incorporated in the main build of Blender at some point next year, as this dev comment reveals. In the same comment you can see the list of priorities for the dev team together with completion estimates:
Personally, I think that the developers are doing excellent job. Some neat looking results can be found in this very long Freestyle thread on Blender Artists (go to the last page and then go back in order to see the most recent renders), as well as here. Click the trailer above to see it in action.
Freestyle has certainly come a long way since I first wrote about it. Two years ago it was an obscure script that could produce nice results on condition that user was proficient with Blender, had some knowledge about Python scripting and was determined enough to do quite a bit of trial and error. I covered Freestyle back then, because it was a free alternative to commercial products, but frankly, for an average Blender user, it was unusable.
Fast forward to 2010, Freestyle is now functioning inside Blender (in special builds available from GraphicAll.org), with full graphical interface and a large number of parameters to customize the line output, such as variable thickness, color, line ending and dash spacing. The whole project is on its way to be incorporated in the main build of Blender at some point next year, as this dev comment reveals. In the same comment you can see the list of priorities for the dev team together with completion estimates:
1) the new artist-friendly GUI - 30%
2) feature edge detection at mesh intersection - 0%
3) finalization of Python API improvements - 80%
Personally, I think that the developers are doing excellent job. Some neat looking results can be found in this very long Freestyle thread on Blender Artists (go to the last page and then go back in order to see the most recent renders), as well as here. Click the trailer above to see it in action.
