As a rendering artist for Slice of Heaven, I have to do many experiments to find out which style is suitable for our film. We came to an agreement that the final look of the film should adopt a watercolour style. Therefore, the experiments done aimed to achieve watercolour effects .
First, I started off with using toon shader (3 tone shader) on all objects. All objects are rendered in a single layer, then composited in Nuke.
![3d animation experiments Maya NPR Toon Shader paint effects cell shading Non-photorealistic Render](https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/disp/d08aa538595805.57682805f2d5b.png)
Rendered image from Maya
![3d animation experiments Maya NPR Toon Shader paint effects cell shading Non-photorealistic Render](https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/disp/95e39738595805.57682805f3271.png)
Final image after compositing in Nuke
I realised that there is a lack of control by using one single layer for all the objects in the scene. For the next experiment, I separated the each objects into different render layers.
![3d animation experiments Maya NPR Toon Shader paint effects cell shading Non-photorealistic Render](https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/disp/23d27038595805.57682805f388c.png)
I have greater control now, but it does not have watercolour effect. So I moved on to see if I could create watercolor textures on the models.
![3d animation experiments Maya NPR Toon Shader paint effects cell shading Non-photorealistic Render](https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/disp/e5b11338595805.5768193f51d5e.png)
I tried to create my own shader using hypershade. The texture was not to our liking so we did not use it in the end.
![3d animation experiments Maya NPR Toon Shader paint effects cell shading Non-photorealistic Render](https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/disp/52abcc38595805.57681a3b14767.png)
Graph network for the shader I've created
To achieve a watercolor look, I tried using paint effects in Maya. I painted randomly on the model using different watercolour brushes in Maya, then I proceed to add more textures in Nuke.
![3d animation experiments Maya NPR Toon Shader paint effects cell shading Non-photorealistic Render](https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/max_1200/5b33cc38595805.5768193f515d5.png)
Maya scene setup
![3d animation experiments Maya NPR Toon Shader paint effects cell shading Non-photorealistic Render](https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/max_1200/43497538595805.5768193f51034.png)
Screengrab from rendered animation
By using paint effects and nuke, we are now one step closer to achieving watercolor style. After that, however, we encountered another problem: The textures on the character are not moving with the character. We also find that the textures are too distracting.
![3d animation experiments Maya NPR Toon Shader paint effects cell shading Non-photorealistic Render](https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/max_1200/c01c7038595805.5768193f50b65.png)
After that, I separated each element into different render layers. For example, the hair has 2 layers, one for colour and another for shadow. I could add noise in Nuke to create a watercolor effect.
![3d animation experiments Maya NPR Toon Shader paint effects cell shading Non-photorealistic Render](https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/max_1200/e8a0c838595805.576819d120fb1.png)
Both of us are pleased with the final outcome, so we decided to render it using this method.