Hi folks,

Today we announce the immediate availability of Toon! Pro. Toon! Pro is
a cell shader and line renderer for Carrara 4. High quality anti-aliased
lines, a powerful cell shader, and the ability to combine cell with
traditional and even GI rendering makes Toon! Pro a must have tool for
the digital cell artist.

Check out the product page at
http://www.digitalcarversguild.com/products/toonpro

, the gallery at
http://www.digitalcarversguild.com/products/toonpro/galleryframe.htm

, or download and try out Toon! Pro at
Carrara 4
PC
http://www.digitalcarversguild.com/downloads/c4/toonpro.zip
Mac
http://www.digitalcarversguild.com/downloads/c4/toonpro.sit

Regards,
Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
3D plug-ins for Carrara
http://digitalcarversguild.com

Do I still have to use Carrara's renderer engine so that this toon renderer engine can write on rendered images?

GWeb,

Toon! Pro is it's own renderer now for creating the lines, but it still passes off much of the work to the Realistic renderer. The cell effect is done at shading time as a lighting model now instead of in the renderer or as a post render filter.

Regards,
Eric Winemiller
Digital Carvers Guild
3D plug-ins for Carrara
http://digitalcarversguild.com

Is it possible to add non-realistic renderer? It might be alot faster in rendering time. Some toon artists may want a single color in the body area.

You can get a single color in the body area by just using a single color in the shader. If you're doing a simple render like that, the Realistic renderer is very fast anyways. Regards, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild 3D plug-ins for Carrara http://digitalcarversguild.com

Cool!

You need to do some sort of plugin bundle deals as their are so many to choose from, ie buy 3 get 1 free. Pete

Just curious, but why no C3 support? Is there something in C4 that this plug-in relies on? Thanks, Paul

Paul, Yes there is, Lighting Models. In C4 they exposed that part of the rendering pipeline to the SDK. The only two with C4 are Phong and the Shadow Catcher, but it's a really fun place to add new functionality. The Shaders Plus plug-in I released a couple of weeks ago also uses Lighting Models and is C4 only. I could port the line renderer back to C3, but without the cel shader, it wouldn't be nearly so useful. Regards, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild 3D plug-ins for Carrara http://digitalcarversguild.com

Paul- The reason its CS4 only is because in CS4 they gave access and control to the lighting models in Carrara. Which CS3 had limited support of. Brian

Wow, very cool. Ok another reason to get the upgrade. Now if I could just get that job, then I would have money again. hehe

Sucks being unemployed, can't buy all the toys I used to buy! ;-)

Thanks for the info. I figured it must be something to do with C4, but figure I would ask anyway.

Paul

Message edited on: 11/27/2004 21:39

My kids have been very bad this year. ;) haha Shonner is the renderer slower than the default sample on the image you posted?

Thanks Eric, this looks impressive! Yup, I'm gonna need a job!

The render will be slower than just using the Realistic renderer. Toon! Pro must calculate the lines in addition to what the Realistic renderer must normally do. Toon! Pro is currently not thread safe either so on a multiprocessor box, only a single CPU will be used. Regards, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild 3D plug-ins for Carrara http://digitalcarversguild.com

Is there a way I can remove my old Toon part 3 off Carrara for this new Toon Pro in?

GWeb, There's no need to remove the old, they coexist without a problem. Not sure you could do it if you tried, last time I looked Toon was no longer stand alone, they had rolled it in with some of the other post render filters so there was no longer a toon.dta and toon.mcx that you could delete. Regards, Eric Winemiller Digital Carvers Guild 3D plug-ins for Carrara http://digitalcarversguild.com

The Toon! Pro render I posted above took about the same time as a regular render would take. The toon outline is applied to each block that finishes rendering. And that takes only about 1/2 a second on my PC to apply.