Watercolor style?

[Don Seidel]

Anyone find a decent workflow for watercolor style rendering? AI render would probably do pretty good w perspectives, but I’m looking for 2D graphics with a watercolor look.

[Jeff Prince]

Export the image from Vectorworks and color it in Procreate on the iPad 🙂

You can make beautiful watercolors quickly that way.  Also excellent for digitally mimicking copic marker, acrylic, and ink/pencil drawings.

 

This is one of the best brush collections I have purchased:

https://nathanbrownart.com/collections/for-procreate

 

[grant_PD]

Do you have an example of what you're trying to achieve?

[Josh Schulman]

Have you tried typing in “watercolor, pencil sketch, pink, lavender, pastels” into the new Vectorworks AI? 

[Kevin K]

@Don SeidelAre you wanting this for a Client presentation,  or just for your own use? Just curious.

 

I do primarily Photo Realistic Rendering but occasionally it is nice to be able to produce something a bit more "painterly".

I found this Photoshop 'Action' item online, Was very inexpensive...like $7.00 as I recall.

This particular one was geared towards architecture, and yes, you do need Photoshop to make it all work, but it happens in seconds, and there are many tweakable options to choose from.

Here is a link to the one pertaining more to 'watercolor'.  Disclaimer:I have no idea what it would do to your 2d graphics,,,,you would just need to give it a try I suspect.

 

But for something under $10.00 bucks seems worth a go. 🙂

 

https://graphicriver.net/item/watercolor-photoshop-action/17015483

 

Here is an example of how the architecturally oriented one I purchased was applied to a rendering I created, just to give you an idea::

 

Original Rendering:

 

'Sketchy' version applied to my original Rendering:

[bcd]

Lots of ways to approach this - depends on what tools are to hand.

This would be my take using an external renderer.

 

[bcd]

[rWulff]

I’m achieving decent results using the AI Visualizer. 

 

Source:

 

Output:

 

If it’s helpful, here is the base prompt that was used to achieve this look. 

 

Prompt:

water color and detailed black ink pen, Spanish Colonial Revival structure surrounded by vineyard background, smooth white stucco walls, mission tile roof, sky reflections in windows, rolling hills with rows of grape vines, sunset colors, keep vertical wood doors, agave, wet look, detailed plants

 

I should point out that the look wasn’t achieved with simply entering the prompt and a single push the generate button. It did require some finesse with the prompts and the creativity slider to sort of build the look, repeatedly. Wash, rinse, repeat if you will. Many times it took me in a direction that I wasn’t aiming for so in that case I would have to refresh the image and started over until I was back on track.

 

Up until last week when this feature appeared in the update, I was very skeptical of AI and purposefully avoided it but for my use, this is a win! 

Great job Vectorworks team!

 

-Ron

 

[Jeff Prince]

2 hours ago, rWulff said:

I’m achieving decent results using the AI Visualizer. 

how long do you think you spent from initiating the AI program and arrived at your final result?

[BartHays]

OP: "...I’m looking for 2D graphics with a watercolor look."

Here is a video that does an ok job of showing a pretty manual way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JixRO1aMC9o

There are, of course, lots of PS brushes and other assets that you can buy in a watercolor style to manually create the look.

 

I think your question is does anyone have a workflow for watercolor-style plans/elevations that are a little more automated? 

AI might still work, ( copyright and ethical concerns aside) but more experimentation is required.

 

I have tried a bunch of the plugins and actions that @Kevin K mentioned, none of which were great for my work.

(Search Envato Elements for "Architecture watercolor" They look promising but often fall short. IMHO)
 

My preferred technique, similar to the video above is to generate a color rendering, and a Hidden Line Rendering,
Bring them both into Photoshop as layers, HLR on top, and set the blending mode to "Multiply"

Fiddle with filters on the rendering layer to get a good base look. 
Create a layer in between the two other layers and fill it with white. Set the blending mode to "Screen".

 

Now get a "watercolor" Brush, set to 20% Opacity, and paint black on the middle layer to 'reveal" the colors underneath.

 

A quick Sample is attached (it's not great, but you will get the layer structure)

Sketch test.psd

 

Bart

 

 

Edited March 24 by BartHays
typos

[Kevin K]

Bart

a few moving parts, but looks good!:-)

[rWulff]

Jeff, probably about a half hour.