Making vintage anime with Blender and Photoshop

This is my messy process, make sure to experiment
/ deadtunnelrat
Evangelions models: www.deviantart...
Music by Deergod
/ deerxxgod

[@Gracie-rr4ut]

When I saw this on reddit I couldn't believe it was a 3d render, thanks for this!

[@foxxuu]

I mean it's a 3d render with A LOT of photoshop :d

[@WwZa7]

​@@foxxuu Almost all good renders have a lot of post production going for them, but I guess an argument can be made, that here it was nearly painting over.

[@RefractArt]

Why not tho, it's amazing but also common what you can achieve with the right shaders.

[@wyattarthur5275]

Videos like this prove there's no excuse for the God awful CGI in Anime

[@SogonD.Zunatsu]

@@wyattarthur5275 To the contrary, it shows that it requires a lot of work just for one static picture. And movement tends to betray CG.

[@PYC128]

I wonder how much of the Photoshop part could be done in Blender’s compositor for full animations! Nice video, I’ll definitely be trying out the motion blur blending

[@Rayo75]

I'm also interested in this, let me know if you find something!

[@Whalester]

I have limited experience in the blender compositor, but I believe it's a little too complex for that. Best would probably be like some time consuming process where you auto actions to record the steps for the first frame, then import and apply to all other frames in photoshop. I know photoshop has animation tools.

[@RobZombii]

​@@Whalester So from what you're saying, would it be easier to composite in something like Premiere Pro?

[@Whalester]

@@RobZombii Yes, that would probably be best. I have only really used After Effects, but yeah I believe so. You would also probably want to instead of photoshop so you can more easily generate new noise per frame, because static noise is good on the image, but brings little to nothing to the video if it's just overlayed.

[@theburnboss]

Just render all the frames and let Photoshop batch them with actions.

[@OnyDeus]

I've never seen anyone use motion blur blend layers before. So cool!

[@emanuel3617]

I just found that out too, you can do the same to make fake anime screenshots by applying a blur effect on your drawing

[@Rissen_]

Ive been using blurs in general like most but motion blur? Yeah never!, it looks great for this i gotta try it out

[@Lou-li5mv]

this is very cool, but would be really nice to instead create the post-effects in a video editor or maybe even blender, so you could apply it to an animation

[@SimiVideoCreator]

you can render the animation, put it into a video editor of your choice and then in the timeline copy and paste the clip over itself, add the directional blur, choose the blending mode and viola! :D

[@IS0JLantis]

you can also do all the post processes mentioned in the video in after effects

[@Galafador]

you can animate this in photoshop if you wanted to, just export the animation from blender as image frames an then apply each frames with the same post-processing effects. in PS you can automate the post-processing part after doing it once, except the repainting I guess...

[@josuedavidurand]

Look at what he need to do to get a fraction of my power - Cathodic TV probably

[@stevess7777]

Imagine a studio making an anime like this!

[@MarkArandjus]

I remember watching the Rebuild of Evangelion and it just wasn't the same with how sharp and perfect all the lines were. The messy softness of old anime is... special.

[@dexorne9753]

It's nostalgic and part of its identity

[@SeaSerpentLevi]

YESSS definitely

[@gxrsky]

diffuison filters. they did it on purpose.

[@brooklyngray1527]

Fun fact - most of Evangelion 3.0+1.0 was made in Blender, and used a lot of open source plug-ins along with the grease pencil tool.

[@Billythekld]

The og one looks clean af tho, the shapes the depth of every little part

[@antigrav6004]

This is wild. I love how easy the tutorial is. 3D is where a lot of anime is heading and we're losing the beauty of the 90s era anime. Maybe something like this is a good compromise.

[@lucascarracedo7421]

Definitely. Sadly, all the details that made this look were a byproduct of very limited technology that had to find a way around extremely low data transmission rates and then got stuck in the past. These days it's not the look they go for, for better or worse. We have a soft spot for it because we grew up with it though.

[@rena10009]

imagine retouching every frame like this tho... there's something called "the long shortcut" where if you want something done right...don't take weird short cuts that you're going to have to fix up a million times afterward. if the old look is desired...you go the old way. it's special because it's got heart. heart can be emulated, but never duplicated.

[@ForboJack]

@@rena10009 Even with all this extra fixup, it's still so much less work than drawing frames the old way.

[@rena10009]

@@ForboJack yea, you're right about that. but it's not as much less work as one would hope, and if you're going for the true old school style...there's so much more to it than grading color and adding some noise. a perfect model isn't what you get when someone is drawing out every frame. when you're animating with drawing frame by frame, you get to do cool stuff like exaggerate features of things like the length of the arms in outlaw star's grapler ships. or decide that goku's arm is going to be SUPER veiny in this particular shot, or just add personality to frames that you can't really do like this. i realize i'm being a sour puss and a negative nancy here....but if you're going to go through all this work to get the old school look....i think it saves time in the long run to remember the real reason the old school look was loved. and that's heart, not the speed it took to make. there is no substitue for that effort and artistic freedom. that's not to say this isn't an insane accomplishment. this video was truly astonishing.

[@yveltalsea]

@@rena10009 In photoshop you can save adjustments and stuff like this as presets, so it could be done in the click of a button

[@LuisF_]

This was the best tutorial I found about this, congratulations!

[@uniworkhorse]

man sold his soul to the devil to understand every blending mode mama mia

[@davepatois297]

This tutorial is also amazing to get that old show feel with drawings, thank you it helped a ton!

[@MantaRayRaygun]

Came from reddit. This is amazing. Well done!

[@spiderchubbbb]

I love the start of the video, straight to the tutorial

[@noodledood12]

This is unbelievably underrated. All of this info is extremely useful, and it's presented clearly as well. Keep it up, my man!!

[@lucascarracedo7421]

What he is doing is basically emulating the way broadcast video works with chroma subsampling and image compression to make the image feel as a capture of TV content. And results are really good because he's got good taste.

[@Schtun]

lmao i saw this on reddit and now its on my feed. Love the work

[@lucamegioranza2035]

definetely a masterpiece in both softwares, you have my respect

[@shinjiikari5174]

Back in the day: "HOW TO MAKE YOUR DRAWING LOOK LIKE A REALISTIC 3D OBJECT!!!!!" Now: "HOW TO MAKE YOUR REALISTIC 3D OBJECT LOOK AS FLAT AS POSSIBLE AND LIKE HIGHLY STYLISED OLD SCHOOL ANIMATION!!!" We've come full circle, nice.

[@NelsonStJames]

It's hard to believe all these tools are out here today available to almost everyone. I'm surprised we haven't seen a new age of animation where independent creators are doing their own thing and finding audiences that aren't being served with the way animation has been heading in the last few decades. We should have had Makoto Shinkais times 10 by now.

[@giustyyt]

The programs themselves might be free, or still obtainable through... not so legal ways, but you still need a good machine to render animation, which has its cost. Also even if 3D animation is faster than the traditional one, it still takes time and not many people have it if they animate as a hobby. There are good animated projects on the web but most ones I see are either abandoned or have very slow progress.

[@darnassiannightsaber7835]

@@giustyyt This right here, expensive hardware is definitely a factor. Also there's the amount of time you need to master these tools to be able to do your own thing and not just follow along tutorials with exact parameters.

[@Boorosan]

This is gold content

[@MADKapo]

Should've posted this on reddit with the caption "does anyone know which episode of Eva this is from?" and then proceed to see everyone colectively loose their shit as they deem it some sort of "obscure lost media" lmao

[@22MewDragon]

This is really cool and informative! Another detail I like to add when I’m making a “fake old animation” look, is to add a subtle, soft drop shadow underneath the character(s). Old animation was done on cels that would be overlayed on top of the backgrounds, so a lot of frames would have these small shadows. This video honestly makes me want to try out blender seriously

[@rhinuu045]

you did a great job i wonder how it would look animated

[@mathewsvinicius7957]

Dude, could you share your thoughts on animating these models with your rendering process to achieve a final anime scene? Im researching this for a while now and your render was simply the best one Ive seen on internet ever.

[@activemotionpictures]

Impressive look on Photoshop! Great inspiring video!

[@activemotionpictures]

@Itz moni yes, you can. Might actually be useful to create a specific PS Action replay, so you'll do it almost instantly using File>Batch>(Action)-(Filename)>Folder destination (Snap fingers).

[@waranghira]

Hue + Saturation = Color. Unless you want them in different opacity percentage that's why you kept them separate.

[@moseph6432]

bro this is awesome

[@klasbee]

damn, long way from the Cod Edits. Finished the whole video then realized it was you lmao. Sick stuff man

[@ArthurBizkit]

Commenting for the algorithm. MORE!!!

[@MatthewsWd0]

Appreciate you sharing your process! All the subtle details make the image feel authentic. Very skillful.

[@C_Corpze]

Great tutorial! Honestly I would do most of this in the compositor inside Blender itself because doing this for full animation renders would take ages.

[@talvoskamote]

you can record then automate photoshop after rendering img

[@alexsender4986]

Very cool. Never used evee, familiar with PS. Cool to find out about dozen new technics just in 7 minutes)) Thank you

[@TheRumpletiltskin]

Amazing tutorial. Thank you! posterization (like poster on the wall, not pahster). :D... phrasing comes from the days before full color prints were easily made, and they would "posterize" photos to bring the color count down. : posterization limits the number of colors in a scene, thus increasing the gradient step size between colors.

[@Eeta_Zeeba]

It's also more of an artifact of low color depth .gif files : color depth limits the number of colors in a scene

[@ricseeds4835]

It blows my mind how advanced Blender is while being open source. Can we have the same happen to Gimp and LibreOffice at least?

[@LoveYourself-318]

holy schmoly, i've been wondering about the vintage anime "glow" where everything looks a bit fuzzy and that trick with the blur saturation layer was exactly what I needed!

[@tristanight.official]

This was fun to watch, thanks for the share!

[@paolaanimator]

I wonder if anime with full 3D animation can be made with 3D renders but then have the grease pencil for 2D black lines and then add in some sort of filter in video editing afterwards to give that retro anime feel but still take advantage of newer powerful tech like 3D animation. Loved the video and that 3D render with the photoshop touch up looks so nice.

[@DARTbeats]

this is very well done! im so glad people like you are out here blessing us with these tuts

[@k4m361]

EXCUSE ME WHAT

[@fenfire3824]

Funny, if in old anime the effects are done because of compression, you could just use the same codec old series used. Or run the image via an old video capture card. Or just both.

[@Itsme-wt2gu]

The original studio is also doing this kind of workforce

[@hranko3143]

Sometimes what ill do is fart into my hand and then throw it baseball pitch style at someone.

[@Kittysuit]

yessss i love when people think outside of the box!!!!! very cool! thanks for sharing!

[@wellox8856]

nice!

[@MrTomStanton]

Lovely post work.

[@jamesthechipmunk5306]

love how straight to the point you are. thank you

[@talkadelics]

Ur gonna turn a 3d into a dragonballz stile anime

[@slenzip]

Love the tutorial here! Really want to fiddle around with some half life models and see what hapoens

[@rambu3013]

Now you are obligated to make Half Life anime. I demand it now!

[@bogger_]

Brother in Crist we have the compositor

[@VeeZzz123]

Pretty sure you can make a more universal or general filter of it, applicable to any render, maybe even 3d animation if you apply it to every frame. I'm sure it won't be as good and would need a ton of tweaking, just wishful thinking. Also, couldn't you use a technic like Arc Systems Work to automate the black lined edges (Cel shading)? or is it not good enough to sell the effect?

[@AlexeyDesign]

This is awesome! But what if you could do same stuff in blender composite and make animation on 12fps ( anime standart) ? This is will be just insane.

[@uncle_mitt]

Didn't realize they had Blender AND Photoshop in 1995. That's crazy

[@montajedelespectador]

On 95's have Maya and Photoshop

[@jaimerojas6578]

Man photo editing is incredible, all those little tweaks make something normal to look amazing.

[@notjojuice]

Absolutely amazing, im currently making it into a custom node with extra parameters. But this is the best tutorial ive seen to date on any blender anime/toon/npr.

[@velocityra]

Did you make it?

[@yaranaikaexecute3196]

I was just thinking about if it was possible to do this in blender directly, it would make animations really cool and pretty easy. It's just a bunch of filters and only thing that seems hard to do are the lines, I don't think I ever saw a 3d linework that was perfect, it's always just a bit off. Hope you can share some progress you made on it, maybe even the whole shader :).

[@unicornhuntercg]

Compositor node ?

[@notjojuice]

@@velocityra yep! Its available on blender market as “Animafy” node

[@notjojuice]

@@yaranaikaexecute3196 I did! Its a compositor node! You can find it on blender market as “animafy node”

[@JohnLFSilver]

ty

[@dr_selby]

EPIC!!

[@SeaSerpentLevi]

So nice my man when i create something experimenting around with this process, and i get something good, i will make sure to dm or tag you to say thanks

[@Nodsaibot]

what? NO SCAN LINES? Disappointed!

[@TentacleFarmer]

4:10 bruh you just reignited some PTSD with that statement. Were you in the Air Force by any chance?

[@slouch186]

woooow this looks so damn good. hopefully there is a good way to translate it to animation so studios can start using these effects.

[@DiterEffects27]

amazing tutorial, congratulations and thank you for the sharing

[@1337png]

this look af, i used it on a animated music video. ty bro ♥

[@pcenero]

you've definitely put the animeRAT.x264.480p.engsubs.S01[batch] energy into your renders

[@TreyPDB]

Could you animate it?

[@leonardoromero2000]

Evangelion is Vintage Anime for you? How old are you 13?

[@bigeststarspark]

holy shit this looks so true

[@aliabbas.14]

this is the best tutorial ive found about anime style in blender. Thanks!

[@gxrsky]

check veryveig channel

[@flochiz]

How coincidence, i have just started to watch neon genesis evangelion n this popped up on my yt recommendations

[@duhbowl.d]

geez is this just 1 frame?!?!

[@The-Anathema]

Scanlines, CRT perspective distortion, and CRT moire effect would've been the creme de la creme of making it look like a shitty image shared 40 times on the internet, implying someone just photographed their CRT. I think optimally you'd want to export the freestyle lines separately because some of them are pretty rank (notably the circle thing in the bottom right corner doesn't look really great and kinda breaks the illusion that it is 2D, has that distinct 'blender freestyle' jank), though that'd require even more manual post-processing since I'm more or less suggesting re-doing the lines by hand. Overall a really interesting technique, if I can figure out how to automate most of it so it's feasible for animation I just might steal this :)

[@kukri52231]

We need more tutorials from you. What other wizardry do you know?

[@BGTenders]

The algorithm brought me here... All praise to the algorithm 🙏

[@PoseidonProductions]

awesome vid. more content like this plz

[@HarleyAMV]

I am shocked. Appalled. Disgusted. Impressed. Subscribed.

[@adadomu]

Is this possible to recreate on Blender's compositor? I'm learning in class how to separate render layers and such, and I'd love to recreate this! I'm still no expert on the matter, but I don't know if it'd be easier to replicate in other video editing softwares like After Effects and such

[@natewatson6962]

The shader already looks amazing before you do anything on photoshop

[@Atmos_Glitch]

"You want it to like someone took a screenshot of a show and then posted it online and the it got reposted 40 times, that's the goal here!"

[@futurestoryteller]

Some of this has to be unnecessarily redundant somewhere, but I commend your obsessive attention to detail

[@Tycini1]

You guys are 30 years too late, Japan has already defeated you on every field and you did nothing to fight back

Me, who watched Evangelion from the new "Renewal" high end polished versions: "That's... not it."

[@thepacific2933]

too much work, I'll just screenshot the same image over and over 1.000 times

[@Maukustus]

that render looks exactly like a screenshot from eva wtf

[@DoctorBatmanMD]

Pretty sure “posterization” is pronounced like “poster”. Since it’s replicating a graphic poster look.

[@ZCoreStudio]

I am more interested in the photoshop part than the Blender If I can duplicate these effects on aftereffect or opentoonz I might actually get the anime feeling on my animations

[@toggle_cat]

just what i was looking for absolutely incredible thanks

[@NRubric]

Would that also work with animation?

[@San-nj8fj]

I mean, theoretically you could animate it and then go frame by frame and do all this to different levels to mimic the slight inconsistency of cell animation.

[@TriarchVisgroup]

For the sake of actually animating this, you could doa lot of those layers inside of Blender and achieving a lot of those effects for an entire animation range.

[@sayonara816]

This was super helpful 🤍

[@87render_official]

Excellent!

[@sebastianwardana1527]

i mean... you can already just render each frame out and have it changed in photoshop... but... that seems to be faster, right? but then... true cinematographers edit ever frame anyway, right?

[@AbyssalSoda]

I thought I was good at photoshop, I thought wrong

[@mariokart64n]

interesting seems like the photoshop step tries to mimic VHS video degradation with a mix of block compression artifacts from those old avi encoders. I wonder if you couldn't just do this directly in blender's render compositor

[@PsychupforGeat]

Nothing beats the tension of the hand drawing. This is just lazy work.

[@eugenechelovechniy]

Hummm... U just make GooEngine useless by one video?

[@cyberolya]

Amazing tutorial! Thank you a lot🥰

[@TR-707]

rat! you could probably do this live in the compositor now in 3.5. Hope you give it a go in the future and checkout how to live composite you will love it i am sure i promise. thank you for your videos and have a nice 2023

[@jeneziz4450]

You kind of sound like saul goodman!! i find that hilarious

[@1-no-176]

Раньше это было ограничение картинки. А теперь мы специально херим качество, чтобы стало лучше. Поворот назад - то, что происходит, когда попадаешь в тупик.

[@Petardozord]

instead freestyle, you could just double mesh and flip it inside out with single-face material. results are much better.

[@doursen]

This just looks like a screenshot but with a lower quality..?

[@elanlynn5973]

Kinda curious how 3D anime person model looks with this method.