Summary:
- Discover Enscape's Artistic Modes with Chaos Rendering Engineer Ilias Kapouranis. By using past release projects, he shows how you can transform scenes into painting-like renderings.
- Each mode is broken down with step-by-step settings that allows you to replicate or adapt these artistic effects in your own projects.
- Examples include pen-style sketches, jittered pencil drawings, saturated colored pencil scenes, muted overviews, and watercolor renderings.
- These expert insights showcase how you can express mood, narrative, and creativity with different Enscape rendering styles.
It’s been almost a year since our first post about the release of the Artistic Modes, and we are grateful for the warm welcome and feedback we have received from you. Since then, a lot has improved both in terms of quality and performance, making the modes more useful than ever! If you haven’t read the post, we highly recommend it as an introduction to the feature.
Today, we are going on a trip down memory lane. We will use Enscape scenes from past releases and present different Artistic Mode styles, along with sharing all the required visual settings. We aim to give you a set of predefined styles to quickly get you close to your vision and then subtly perform smaller tweaks to perfect it while also showing you interactions with other programs’ features.
Each section focuses on a different style, and then the renderings are grouped by scene with additional renderings similar to the examples provided.
Pen style
Default
The first Enscape release scene that we are going to use is the one from version 2.7 from early 2020! This beautiful Villa with its simple orthogonal features can really be showcased with the tilted hatching of the shadows, highlighting the volumes and points of contact of the different surfaces.
To get the default Pen style:
- Enable Sketch Mode
- Set Normal Outlines
- Set Pen Palette
- Enable Hatched Shadows
- Adjust the sun position to get the shadows where you want them
- Adjust the exposure and/or sun brightness to affect the area of the shadows
Extended lines and opaque glass
For the front view of the Villa, since we are highlighting the overall shape of the building with its exterior features and big glass panels, we want to hide anything in the interior. This way, we are preventing the viewer’s attention from focusing on the detailed, smaller objects. The extended lines can also be utilized to give a rougher look to the sketch, but since we are using detailed assets, this is not very well communicated.
For example, the people assets in the middle and the chairs in the foreground are way too detailed to give the impression of a rough sketch, so be mindful of that as you are creating your renders. The Enscape Asset Library contains a collection of rough placeholder style assets that could be used.
To get the extended lines and opaque glass style:
- Enable Sketch Mode
- Set Thick Outlines
- Set Extended Lines to 30%
- Set Pen Palette
- Disable Transparent Glass
- Enable Hatched Shadows
- Adjust the sun position to get the shadows where you want them
- Adjust the exposure and/or sun brightness to affect the area of the shadows
Hatched shadows and exposure trick
Let’s move to another scene from Enscape 2.9. For the following render, we wanted to highlight the stark difference between the fluid shape of the proposed building and the completely orthogonal shapes of the surrounding buildings. The orthographic projection is great for this, as it highlights parallel lines. To slightly reduce the parallel lines and the feeling of generated imagery, a jitter to the outlines can be introduced.
Since this rendering contains a lot of information, we used a trick to provide some depth and visual cues. You might notice that there are areas that are hatched which are not under shadow; a lot of grassy areas which have lighter hatching than the shadows. To achieve this, we decreased the Exposure to 0, exploiting the fact that the hatching is determined from the brightness of the surfaces, with shadows being the darkest.
To get the hatched shadows/grass style:
- Set Orthographic view
- Enable Sketch Mode
- Set Thick Outlines
- Set Jitter to 31%
- Set Pen Palette
- Enable Hatched Shadows
- Adjust the sun position to get the shadows where you want them
- Adjust the exposure and/or sun brightness to affect the area of the shadows
- Set Exposure to 0 (this can vary depending on the color of the grass in your scene)
Pencil style
Subtle jittering
The next style showcases a scene from Enscape 3.0. The mirrored towers of this release make them a great example of painting-like renderings. In the following rendering, the focus is on the sheer size of the buildings and the available area at their front for recreational activities.
These buildings use rounded and extruded floors, and to highlight them, we moved the sun so that the shadows provide clear cues about the relationship between them. Initially, the building in the foreground had a lot of white space and parallel lines, driving away the impression that this is a painting.
To combat this, jitter was added just enough to break the parallel lines. Another change was made by tweaking the exposure, which caused the rectangular shadowed areas under the windows to appear and break the monotonous white between the glass panels and floors.
To get the subtle jittering Pencil style:
- Enable Sketch Mode
- Set Normal Outlines
- Set Jitter to 50%
- Set Pencil Palette
- Disable Transparent Glass
- Enable Hatched Shadows
- Adjust the sun position to get the shadows where you want them
- Adjust the exposure and/or sun brightness to affect the area of the shadows
Full-on artistic
Having standard perspective views with 90 degrees of Field of View or Orthographic Views can get monotonous after a few images, making the viewer lose focus. So, consider changing them from time to time. The next image uses the scene from Enscape 3.2 and cranks up the jitter and field of view for a more dynamic/different view.
To get the full on artistic Pencil style:
- Enable Sketch Mode
- Set Thin Outlines
- Set Jitter to 100%
- Set Pencil Palette
- Disable Transparent Glass
- Enable Hatched Shadows
- Set Field of View to 140
- Adjust the sun position to get the shadows where you want them
- Adjust the exposure and/or sun brightness to affect the area of the shadows
Alternatively, you could just leave the Field of View to 90 and go for a more lifestyle approach.
Colored Pencil style
Saturated pencils
As the parallel lines can get tiresome to the viewer, the continuous black and white can have the same effect—and with that, we have you covered with the Colored Pencil option. The next showcase features the scene from Enscape 2.8, a cabin in the woods.
For this example, we wanted to exaggerate the lush greenery surrounding the cabin, so the saturation was increased to 160%. A side effect of the over saturation and the current composition is the viewer’s eyes go straight to the child’s red sweater. Then, following the child's direction of running, the viewer then focuses on the mom “hiding” over the stairs, which establishes the cabin as a great fit for families.
The takeaway from this example is to be careful of the colors used in the composition as they can steal the focus from the original intention. This could be changed by altering the child’s sweater color or using tree assets with more saturated leaf colors.
To get the saturated Colored Pencil style:
- Enable Sketch Mode
- Set Thin Outlines
- Set Jitter to 40%
- Set Colored Pencil Palette
- Enable Transparent Glass
- Enable Hatched Shadows
- Set Image > Saturation to 160%
- Adjust the sun position to get the shadows where you want them
- Adjust the exposure and/or sun brightness to affect the area of the shadows
If you are not fond of the hatching of the Pencil style, you can turn the Colored Pencil into Pencil by reducing the Saturation to 0%.
Muted overview
Returning to the Enscape 3.2 scene, the intention of the next rendering is to provide a high-level overview of the building and its surroundings. Here, color is used for the purpose of differentiating the various objects, and saturation is left at the default.
The reasoning behind this is that the whole building is white and we want that to be the center of attention; if the saturation was increased, then the viewer’s eyes would first focus on the greenery, and the building would be an afterthought.
To assist in the definition of the various objects, the outlines were set to thick. The shadows were also placed in a way to distinguish between horizontal and vertical surfaces by making vertical surfaces covered in shadow, hence darker than the white horizontal ones.
To get the muted Colored Pencil style:
- Enable Sketch Mode
- Set Thick Outlines
- Set Jitter to 100%
- Set Colored Pencil Palette
- Disable Transparent Glass
- Enable Hatched Shadows
- Adjust the sun position to get the shadows where you want them
- Adjust the exposure and/or sun brightness to affect the area of the shadows
Watercolor style
Default
The scene of version 2.9, with its rounded shape, is a great candidate for a painterly presentation. Watercolor has its own settings for adjusting the detail of the strokes: how much water was used and how many colors for the surfaces.
This example also showcases how the sky can be rendered in the chosen Artistic Mode, and changes to the sky, such as cloud density and types of clouds, will be reflected.
To get the default Watercolor style:
- Enable Watercolor Mode
- Set Thin Outlines
- Set Color Gradient to 60%
- Set Surface Detail to 89%
- Enable Transparent Glass
- Set Image > Saturation to 90%
- Adjust the sky cloud settings the create negative white space
- Adjust the sun position to get the shadows where you want them
- Adjust the exposure and/or sun brightness to affect the area of the shadows
We mentioned the sky affecting the result, which means that a nighttime painting is possible. The following example has the same settings as the previous one, except the time of day has been changed to night. We also removed most of the people's assets, decreased the Saturation, and changed the Color Temperature to a cooler value.
To get the nighttime painting Watercolor style:
- Enable Watercolor Mode
- Set Thin Outlines
- Set Color Gradient to 60%
- Set Surface Detail to 89%
- Enable Transparent Glass
- Set Image > Saturation to 75%
- Set Image > Color Temperature to ~7700K
- Change the time of day to night
Saturated watercolors
Revisiting the Saturated Pencils example, the focus on a cabin nestled in lush greenery is equally achieved with Watercolor mode. This time, the Saturation is increased, but we are also decreasing the Color Temperature to make the image warmer and to allow the green colors to pop out more. Moving further away reduces the area where the oversaturated red takes up and becomes a secondary highlight.
To create more contrast between shadows and grassy areas, the sun was placed in a way to create big shadows, and the Color Gradient was pushed to 100% for that sweet blue hue in the shadows to do the rest.
To get the saturated Watercolor style:
- Enable Watercolor Mode
- Set Normal Outlines
- Set Color Gradient to 100%
- Set Surface Detail to 85%
- Set Image > Saturation to 115%
- Set Image > Color Temperature to ~5300K
- Adjust the sun position to get the shadows where you want them
- Adjust the exposure and/or sun brightness to affect the area of the shadows
Artistic watercolors
A scene we haven’t mentioned yet is, of course, from Enscape 3.1! For this example, we are moving towards a painting rather than a presentation of a building, and it can work just as well.
The main setting that gives the rougher look is the combination of removed outlines and the Bleeding Effect, which creates areas around surface borders where a color “seeps” from one surface to another.
The distinct look of the tree leaves is because the setting blurs their borders and smooths their surfaces. Getting the shadows to cover half of the tree branches was also a way to give them volume by having both bright and dark colors on them.
To get the artistic Watercolor style:
- Enable Watercolor Mode
- Set None Outlines
- Set Color Gradient to 100%
- Set Surface Detail to 50%
- Set Bleeding Effect to 100%
- Set Field of View to 30 (this “flattens” the geometry)
- Adjust the sun position to get the shadows where you want them
- Adjust the exposure and/or sun brightness to affect the area of the shadows
Marker style or cel shaded (unofficial)
Watercolor mode' Surface Detail option controls the color strokes on the surfaces and can also be used to achieve smooth coloring by just turning this option to 0%. This makes the surfaces completely smooth, and the style can be reminiscent of markers or cel shaded.
Increasing the saturation is also a must, even by a bit. Going for this style will also require more pronounced outlines, so the thick option gives the best result.
To get the marker “Watercolor” style:
- Enable Watercolor Mode
- Set Thick Outlines
- Set Color Gradient to 0%
- Set Surface Detail to 0%
- Set Image > Saturation to 140%
- Adjust the sun position to get the shadows where you want them
- Adjust the exposure and/or sun brightness to affect the area of the shadows
Scene showcase
Now, we are going to present the renderings already mentioned in the article along with more examples of those styles. The aim for this section is to have each scene’s styles in one place and to try to discern what feelings each rendering evokes in the viewer. This is a mental exercise for the interested reader!
The images can also be found in this folder to be enjoyed in their full 4k glory.
Enscape 2.7
Enscape 2.8
Enscape 2.9
Enscape 3.0
Enscape 3.1
Enscape 3.2
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