Anime and Toon Rendering

Toon Example

Traditional anime uses two-tone colors to separate the lighted-side and dark-side of objects in a scene. However, your art direction my lead you to more colors, including "toon lines" between the colors. Animation:Master has a robust multi-color anime solution that may provide a look never before seen in animation.

Anime color is a rendering option and can be controlled on many levels. You can set it for the camera object, in the rendering tab of the [Tools][Options] dialog, or on Render To File. You can also set anime color on an object's surface properties, a group's surface properties, or on a material's surface properties.

To access the toon shading controls, first turn on Toon Renderer by picking [Tools][Options] and selecting Toon Render on the Rendering tab. Now set the Override Shading option to "ON", just under the Toon Renderer option. This will activate the Shading properties on the dialog.

In the Shading properties you can select the shading method as Standard, Flat, Toon, and Toon w/falloff. Standard is the regular non-toon shaded 3D look. Flat will use the objects color only and not add shading, making look like traditional cels. Toon will use the shading transitions that you set in the panel. Toon with Falloff will use the distance from the light to determine the overall brightness of the object. Meaning that objects further from the light will be darker.

Multi-color anime uses a spectrum called a Gradient to determine the color transitions. Markers can be set by clicking on the spectrum bar. You can move a marker by moving the mouse directly over it and dragging it. Remove a marker by dragging it off of the spectrum bar. Each marker along the spectrum indicates a color boundary. Markers on the left side affect the shaded areas, while markers on the right side affect the lighted areas.

Animation:Master comes with several toon shading presets that you can load by right-clicking (Control-click) on the Gradient bar and picking [Presets] and the preset gradient you want to use. These include a hard Three-tone, a Two-tone(soft), a Two-tone(with line), Two-tone(hard), and Thermo which looks like a thermographic image.

Difference Between "Flat" And "Toon" Shading

"Flat" shading and "Toon" shading are often confused. "Flat" shading means that all lighting is ignored and the models are exactly the colors assigned to them. As a render option, this is useful for interacting with a paint program during decaling to see only the actual colors of the decals. "Flat" shading can also be set for a model that is going to be used as a Front Projection target because it is supposed to be exactly the same as the Front Projection map (except the shadows from "Shadow Only" lights). "Toon" shading, on the other hand, only ignores diffuse lighting and lighting falloff, but recognizes the direction of the light so that part of the surface remains unlit. Toon shading shows specular highlights, and Toon shading can be made to include light falloff. Toon shading also implies that "lines" with be drawn around the models.