I am kind of ashamed to admit that in three plus years of using Poser, I have never had the occasion to learn to make a cartoon-style render! I have just purchased the wonderful Maya X Anime Doll Kit. After scanning through tutorials, reading the manual and searching Google, it seems that you really do not "render" in cartoon mode, you "export" without rendering. Is this true or am I hopelessly off the right track? (Though it sounds like a strange method, the results look right.) Of course I know about SnowSultan's outstanding Z-toon method, but it looks as though Maya has designed this package to work without having to do postwork. That is the magic formula I am asking about here :-) So, cartoon experts, any tips would be gratefully accepted and followed!!! A Very Sheepish Kimberly

Kimberly, just set up your scene, set the document display style to Cartoon or Cartoon with Line, add the anime lights and go to Render - Antialias document, that's it ( and you should uncheck Show Camera Names under Display). Friederike

Friederike, thank you! I will try that!! P.S. Felix sends his love. ;-)

You can also create a one-frame movie that will be saved as a TIF file. This lets you export the anti-aliased Cartoon with Line mode image at any size instead of the Poser window's size. Sorry I don't remember the exact steps on how to do it; I just tried it myself for the first time yesterday. ;) SnowS

It's funny how many of the features of Poser 4 (yes, 4!) remain a mystery to me simply because I have never had the need to use them. Thank you, SnowSultan! I am going to try everything, and your Z-Toon method too. :-) Kimberly

You are welcome, Kimberly and please give Felix a big hug :-). SnowSultan, thanks for the tip with the movie - just tried it and it works great and I can export to whatever format I like.

or me too , in need of a tut for poser4 tried the cartoon render but, didn't come out. anyone got a step by step tut out there? netta

Go to "Animation" setup pull-down in Poser Set Frame to X & Y value you want (like 2048x1536) Set Frames per second and Frame count to: 1 Go to "Make Movie" setup Sequence type: Image Files (for a single still frame) Resolution: Full Quality: Current Render Settings (Or Display Settings in the case of cartoon mode rendering) Frame Rate: Use this frame rate "1" Click O.K. Dialog comes up and asks "Save As" I use PSD because they have better loss-less compression, saves the alpha channel for post-work use, and because I always use Photoshop anyway. I personally never use TIF for anything, ever. If you render a still at 2048 x 1536 it is very good quality and can be rez-ed up further in Photoshop to double that resolution with little quality loss (maybe apply sharpen as needed) and you have a "print quality" cel of Anime Doll. Poser supports up to 4072 x 4072 I think as a MAX render rez, which would be good for really big Poster work. I use this a lot in my own work. Never animate anything except for website graphics. Anime Doll should work great using the SWF output in Pro-Pack. Some people don't like the SWF output from Poser, but it can look pretty good if you spend a little time tweaking the settings. Cel type output should cause the least amount of tweaking problems because it already has a reduced color set

aside for the comercial item at marketplace, the basics of the tutorial method itself is available trough support pages of mayax website though i tested snowsultan Ztoon render method (very clever and usefull), and another toon like method and now i tried with maya, i still did not find the toon flavor i wanted for some projects of mine. but i am trying some methods that combine parts of the others i just stated above. aside from that, you may know that P5 has a "different" cartoon render mode, try it (a friend told me abotu that) and for poser 4 cartoon/w line preview mode, let know you can RENDER with it instead of exporting, to pictuersd of very huge size (above 4096x4096^) if you need postwork: simply go to movie settings, set the animation to 1 frame, and user the make movie option but use the "picture file" option instead of "video file", with correct res and check "actual preview mode" box... easy the lack of mayax method is that you use only plain texture items, if you want a cloth with drawings/patterns, it wont work, unless you postwork. I work on a method that is half between snowsultan and mayax, and (if i manage to make what i want also) may be able to make some kind of cellshaded render, with all darklines ehanced (but so far it is tricky, and i already have many others things scheduled in priority) the idea came to me because i couldn't follow mayax tutorial (dont use photoshop) and that my paint program has differeent features and layers operators, but there is a few tricks i learned with it past months that in fact are useful regarding toonized poser renders...