Good cartoon renderer?

[Ghori]

Hi,

I am pretty disappointed with Max5's ink & paint material...

Can anyone suggest how I can get a cartoon reyes look? You know the kind with some of the wireframe showing through...

cartoon Reyes is old but IMO it can beat the pants off of max 5's cartoon material...

I think that plugin got discontinued... If someone knows where I can get a version which work with max5 I would be *grateful*

Thanks

Ghori

[fabrizzzio]

Hi Ghori.
I think you could try Illustrate.
Likewise, if you can get a really good cartoon look, you need a lot of work in composition.
For example, a good trick is to render a version of the animation (if it's an animation) using a cartoon material or cartoon render engine, and another version using a common renderer, for example, the max scanline with GI. Then you can composite them in layers (for ex. in After Effects) and using different blending modes you can achieve really interesting effects.
That's just an example.
What Im trying to say, is that is not all in the renderer inself. It's in the way you work using it, and another software techniques like composition and postproduction.

I hope you got it.
;)

[Little Nicky]

As fabrizzzio said, Illustrate is one of the best.

But to get that "wireframe showing through" effect, you need to render one frame with the wireframe only, and one with the real render, then in your image editing program, line both pictures up on top of each other in different layers and use an alpha map (easily created with a custom gradient) on the top one. It doesn't matter whether the wire or the normal is on top, it still works.

[FutureMan]

I believe Cartoonreyes was incorporated into Reyes' NPR (Non-Photoreal Renderer), which is actually a very nice plugin! Especially if you use Photoshop as it allows you to use any of the brushes to get a painting\etching\sketched look to your renders, depending on the brush you choose. It can take some getting used to, but if you already modeled it in 3D you can then turn it into a seemingly 2D work, which is excellent for me since I can't draw.

As for the wireframe\diagram look I think Final Render's finaltoon has the ability to make it translucent\transparent and have the wireframe show. Not sure if NPR or Illustrate could do it but I wouldn't be suprised if they can too. I believe you could also do it like was mentioned with some compositing.