I owned A:M way back in the 90s. It wasn't really up to what I was looking for at the time. Now many years later I'm shopping for a decent CA program again.

I'm looking at A:M for the character animation mainly.

I'm posting in this thread because I'd like to know more about the toon shader abilities.

Below is an image of a style I'd like to shoot for. (No, I didn't draw that, but I can do pretty close). Notice that the skin has 3 or 4 shades. A highlight, the middle normal shade, the shadow and in some parts a darker shadow. Also on some areas the skin has a smooth edge to the shadow. The hair, however, has a sharp shadow edge. Also notice that the outlines are colored and not black.

Now, I know getting this look exactly would be impossible for any 3D app, but it's something I'd like to shoot for.

What do you think?

Other things I'd be interested in is how complex the cloth system can get. IE layers of clothing, wind, etc. I also haven't seen much information about the dynamics system (soft/hard) and the particals. The site lacks a lot of info. Just has bullet points. Though I guess I should ask these in another thread. ^^

i have no dout in my mind A:M can do that, but it will take work and alot of decals.... for things like speculaity maps for the hair and skin....don't forget te eyes need an image too...heres one i made.

For the line work you'd probably want to make contact with some of the Japanese A:M users.
I'm not sure how current all the Japanese plugins are but there were some really nice thin line plugins a few years ago.

But to answer the question... "Yes. Animation:Master can do that."

About half way down the page at the following link there is an image that might be of interest to you.
This image was created in v11 (I believe).

Gradient Specularity

Here is a site to check out as well: http://krj.moryou.com/

See if this tutorial on the toon shader answers any of your questions. It's pretty versatile.

http://www.demented3d.com/tutorial/toontut...ng/shading.html

AM can toally pull off that shading, it just takes time and tweaking to get it just right. AM has a gradient bar, the right side of the bar represents where light hits your model, and the left side falls off to darkness. You can set either color intensity (relies on the group color you previously set) or a color itself. Examples at-
http://dement3d.com/tutorial/comic/
There you can see the gradient bar and its effect on objects. When the ticks are close together you get a sharp line, when they're far apart you get a smooth gradient.

As for toon lines, you can set different colors and sizes per group or even turn them off.

The new cloth system is pretty amazing, just a bit difficult to use at the moment. It's best to simulate one piece of clothing at a time (or piece of) in its own chor action.
Couple Examples-
http://dement3d.com/blackdress.mov
http://dement3d.com/tshirt.mov

I havent played with it myself, but dynamics look really impressive as well. You should look at http://www.sgross.com/plugins/plugin6/samples.html for some examples.

If you have any more questions, ask away!

Thank you very much for you replies and links. I'll have to look through them.