I am not a Hash user, though I am very interested in the software. I use Max now with a toon renderer called Illustrate! by David Gould. www.davidgould.com

I love the toon renderer, but rigging characters in Max is really difficult. So difficult I'm thinking of changing to a program where rigging is easier. I hope A:M is that program.

So I have 2 questions:

How hard is it to get a toon image like the one I've attached? Clean lines, a cel look? Does that require a huge amount of tweaking, or is it more or less the default you get with A:M?

(The default you get with Illustrate looks like this.)

My other question is, does anyone have experience with Raf Anzovin's Setup Machine? Does it really work as easily as it does on his site?

Ideally, I'd like to quickly rig characters and render them toon style.

My real dream come true would be to rig and animate in A:M, and then render in Max. But I guess that's not possible, right?

Any help you all can give me would be most appreciated!

Chris

Part of the reason that image looks good is he made a great model. A:M toon render has a lot of options, I'm sure he spent some time adjusting them to suit his goal.



I've used TSM for almost all my character animation and I love it. It's easy to pose my characters with a TSM rig.

It's big power is being able to create rigs for strange characters that are not typical bipeds, although it works great for bipeds too.

It installs a control rig that moves the spine and arms and legs and hands and tails ...

but many people go into it thinking that it will automatically make proper joint deformations, like making a shoulder bend smoothly in any direction. That has to be custom crafted for each character. No automatic rigger can do that well.

If that is the thing you are having trouble doing in MAX, then you'll probably have trouble in any software. There are some good tutorials around here on doing it in A:M though.

You will find... above all else... the main king of features in AM is the ease of rigging and animating characters.

I have heard this constantly over the years. More so than any other compliment. People who use all those "other" programs... always say... AM has better rigging than anything else.

------

I don't have a ton of experience with the Toon render in AM... but I have gotten what I needed when I needed it... it just takes patience and experience.

Some people using AM seem to be able to create absolutely amazing toon renders. It blows me away.

I have an anime film on DVD that was produced entirely in AM some years ago... someone at Hash gave it to me...

we're talking several versions ago... I couldn't honestly tell it from other so called "professional" anime I've seen... it looks fantastic.

If you have the desire, the talent... and the patience... you can do it.

However... that image you posted is definately NOT the default "out of the box" toon render. It takes talent and experience I think to get those kind of results from any application... so don't be dissapointed if you don't get those kind of results right away.

-Vern

Getting that kind of shading is pretty simple, the gradient tool in AM's toon shader is very versatile.

To get clean toon lines a nice solution is to render "Lines Only" (An option in AM) to a seperate file with an alpha channel and about twice its regular size. Shrink it down by 50% then composite in Photoshop or After Effects with the original image.

Be sure to check out the toon/anime tutorial thread at http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=10865

I've never used TSM before, but there's a Anzovin subforum here on the board where you can ask around.

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showforum=23
No thats not a real possibility.

I notice you haven't mentioned modeling - So that you know, AM is not poly-based, it's spline based. Any .3ds models you try to import would require a lot of rebuilding to be usable. If you have a lot of models prebuilt that you planned to use you need to take that into consideration.

Nice render, though it was definitly a labor of love (not to mention a headache or two). Renderings like that can be achieved, although it requires patience and alot of research, topped of with trial and error. Rigging in AM is probably the easiest of all applications. I've used Max and I will speak from experience that AM is much, much, much easier. I recommend using TSM2, although with a little tinkering I've settled on using my own custom skeleton. It's definitly worth $299! Best money you can invest.

That Image was made in A:M, not Illustrate.
It won 1st place in the Toon rendering contest in May 2005
Done by Q. Kusabe
http://www.hash.com/stills/displayimage.ph...m=34&pos=15

Maybe I am misreading your post, but it appeared to me that you were giving that as an example of toon rendering from Illustrate, not A:M....

Since it WAS done in A:M, then the answer is yes--it CAN be done in A:M! How easily? That, like every image you see, depends on your skills.

Kusakabesan is a regular contributor to the Japanese forum (Animas Park).

Earlier this month he posted this fine image in a similar style:
Animas Park - Kusakabe Q's imagery

I seem to recall seeing some of his models available for download. Unfortunately I can't seem to find any of the Japanese model pages I once remembered seeing.

Animas being the Japanese short form for Animation:Master.

I had to reread the post very carefully. I thought the same thing after scanning it quickly... it looked at first glance that the image was being credited to "something else"... but...

after reading it carefully, I am confident that was not the intent of the original post.

-vern

[attachmentid=18171]Hello Everybody-

Thanks for all the help.

For those of you that were confused, here's what I was trying to say about Illustrate! and A:M's toon renderer:

In 3DS Max, if

1. you had a model like the one in the example
2. lit it with one light
3. made sure the proper color textures were on the model
4. then rendered it using the Illustrate! default renderer

...then the render would look very much like what this example looks like. Illustrate! is really easy that way.

You'd get bold edge lines, and a little bit of a shadow here and there, like on the neck and the face in the example.

I want to do animation, so I need to rig characters, and it's a big pain in Max. But I want to rig characters and render them Toon style.

And a lot of the "toon" renders I've seen with A:M don't always produce clean lines, especially around the nose. The lines around the nose in many A:M anime renderings I've seen look like a line produced by shadows instead of the "ink like" lines created by edges. My guess is that if I were to model for toon style, I could model to make sure that I get real edges where I want the nose to be.

So I just really wanted to know how easy it is with A:M's toon renderer to get these clean lines. Like in Greg's presentation, that Bugs Bunny look is what I'm after. And it would be great if that's what you get right out of the box. With Illustrate! that's pretty much what you get at the default state.

I'm sure that with enough work I can get A:M to do anything - I was trying to gauge just how hard it would be to get that Bugs Bunny look in Greg's demo.

Thanks for your patience and help with this.

CW

Gochris, A:M's toon lines have only two settings: bias and thickness. To get the look you're after you'll have to play with the values a bit, but that's all it takes. (And the lines become more and more ink-like as the resolution of the image increases.)

To get the shadows you want, you'll need to configure a single light at the proper position, intensity and distance, but that would be true of any 3D program. A:M's Light Lists make this very easy to do. There are a few other tricks that make it easier--Kricket or I would be happy to bring you up to speed.

I'm loving his site!

Check out the detail in this rendering.

Thom investigates the Inca (or is that Maya?) world

Of course the site is in japanese but the imagery says a lot about kusakabe's work in A:M.

How to create the image you posted by the author of said image (in japanese)

Ok how's this?
[attachmentid=18176]
I took a model that comes on the AM cd, threw it into a default project. Deleted all the lights, put a new light in at 75% then rendered it with several of AMs toon-shader presets.

I'm pretty sure in Gregs demo he uses the cartoon shader. Solid color similar to cels. (you can always turn shadows off as well)

And as always, the more time you put into tweaking your shader and lighting the better your results. For this I'm just trying to reproduce "out of the box/fast".

And here's some examples of the toon-line controls.
[attachmentid=18177]
Bias controls how many much line to draw. The lower it is, the more lines are drawn. Really low (like 5) and things can get blurry and ugly like the foot. The higher you go the cleaner it looks but you run into the danger of having noses and other things disappearing at certain angles.

And then there's line width which is pretty self explanatory.

You can create groups within your mesh so different body parts have different values or even different toon-line colors.

And if you need to, you can manually add your own toon lines.

And if the nose continues to give you trouble, you can always add a "fin" to the edge of the nose and color it black, works really well if the shading is very cell-like. You can get the point of it looking sharp too.

Robcat2075, HeyVern, Kricket, Luckbat, Ilidrake, Zandoria Studios, Rodney -

Thanks for all the great feedback. Special thanks to Kricket for taking the time to make the renders.
That "render as lines" tutorial will be my bible!

So I am convinced that A:M will do what I want. As far as I'm concerned the thread is closed... but of course if anyone wants to add to the thread, be my guest.

As a courtesy, I am going to post some toon renders from this Illustrate software that I've been talking about. I figured you all might be a little curious about the software. Find it at www.davidgould.com
It does not work with A:M.

As I said, I will post toon renders done with this software - but it's late and I have to work in the morning.

Gochris

I'd advise against that. It could get this thread deleted. (See: Forum Guidelines)

Here's another one by Kusakabe I've never seen before:

http://animaspark.net:8080/modules/myalbum/photo.php?lid=34

Rodney, thanks for the link to this site showing his work. Now if we can only get his tutorials translated!

-Jim

personal its not hard at all, i never have trouble with it, after some fooling around with it of course. i found that for scertain gradients(like the one i used below), certain lights have more settings allowing for better renders. this one i used a klig light, and changed the settings.

Okay then, I won't post anything.

Thanks

GoChris

i don't think so he's just shoing what he hope A:M can do.