Hello

I want to buy a new 3D software. Please help me finding out the one that meets my needs. I know a lot of people already ask this question often, but needs are specific.

I need it for several purposes :

• mix 3D with my painted backgrounds  ( particles, water, flying through clouds, placing 2D plans in a 3D world to make the camera rotates freely, and so on )
• mix 3D animations with my 2D animations ( mainly for objects making complex rotations ) , so I want a very cool toon shader, with strokes imitation if possible.
• modelize 3D objects for Vue and Moho
  I also want some preset materials ( wood, glass, plastic, gold, silver, and so on ) that you can start with and edit to feet your needs, instead of always starting from the beginning.

I am not a beginner, I have learned 3dsmax during 3 years with tutorials, several hours a day. I like 3dsmax very much but it is far too expensive for me, and I do not want to use illegal copies of softwares. Maya and XSI are great but far too expensive two. I try to learn Blender since some weeks, because it is free, but it's so rebuting... I tried other freewares like Moray or Anim8or, but they are too basic. Now I am about to try Carrara with Toon!Pro plugin, do you think it could do the job ?

Thanks

I've never seen any commercially acceptable toon renders in carrara, but with a few months' work you might get lucky, if you know the right people to tell you the exact settings needed definitely not poser - worst toon shaders I've ever seen :lol: what kills it with poser is that postwork is always needed, whenever toon shaders rear their ugly heads IMVHO. and postwork of that kind (redrawing the lines) is outta the question in animation the only commercially acceptable toon shaders I've seen were done in either max or lightwave. I dunno what software was used in that new drug movie starring keanu and featuring nude scenes with winona, based on the p. k. dick novel, but I heard that the toon shading process was an agonising, seemingly unending nightmare for them. :crying:

Maya has nice toon shading, but, as you say, the pricetag would keep you away from it. Another thing to consider is that Maya has a very steep learning curve.

I haven't tested Poser 6 toon shader yet, mostly because I am not much into toon shading, so I can't say anything about it.

As far as I know, A Scanner Darkly was filmed and then SOMEHOW turned into toons... I shall try to figure out how to do that some day, lol.

The toon effects in "A Scanner Darkly" was done with digital rotoscoping, in which they basically took live-action footage and applied a toon filter to it in a high-end proprietary video FX software.  It's like applying filters to a movie in Adobe Premiere or Autodesk Combustion.

The director of the movie talks about the process here:
http://www.highend3d.com/news/film/165.html

As for the original question, I would recommend saving up your pennies and investing in 3dsmax with either FinalToon or David Goulde's Illustrate plugin.  MentalRay also comes bundled with Max, and the toon shaders in that renderer have been used many times in production, so they must be good.  Same with Maya or XSI (they both use MentalRay too).

Otherwise, I'd go with Carrara.  Not as good, but better than Poser.