D computer graphics in the early days were often characterized by their slick, clean, perfect and soulless appearance. Tons of sterile shiny metal passed in review, mostly to announce the commencement of a television production. As the years passed and the CG rendering techniques improved, the level of realism that could be achieved progressed accordingly. Raytracing, radiosity, caustics, global illumination, step by step CG is heading towards truly photorealistic imagery. But sometimes you simply don't want a render to be realistic. If you look at the world of traditional painted art, the artistic trend of photorealistic painting in the Sixties was vilified by the art critics because the photographic precision often had a clinical, technical radiation as opposed to what art should bring about: emotion. In the world of art it's generally about bending realism into a characteristic style, grabbing the viewer with a creative, original view upon reality. Luckily for 3D artists, CG software developers introduced "NPR", which stands for Non-Photorealistic Rendering, enabling 3D artists to stylize their creations, but also enabling technical illustrators to achieve an easily readable illustration, featuring lines to enhance the clearness. NPR usually comes in the shape of a plug-in for a specific 3D rendering package. The Germany-based company Cebas (www.cebas.com) recently introduced their incarnation of what an NPR-renderer should be all about. The renderer for 3ds Max and 3ds Viz is entitled finalToon, as an alternative to their photorealistic renderer finalRender.

DISCREET CERTIFIED
FinalRender is one of the few Max plug-ins that wears the new stamp of approval by Discreet, which makes it an official "Discreet certified plug-in". The renderer can be purchased online at the many-sided Turbo Squid 3D assets website (www.turbosquid.com) and comes with a decent installer and comprehensive online user reference. After the plug-in is nestled into the right Max/Viz plug-in map, an authorization request has to be e-mailed to the Cebas registration office. Registration follows soon and opens the gate to the land of finalToon. FinalToon can be divided in two main categories, cartoon shading and line generation. The dedicated finalToon cartoon shader can be found between the shaders in the shader drop-down menu of the standard Max/Viz material, but it's recommended to make use of the finalToon material, which offers the added value of local line generation settings. Global line generation settings can be performed by using the finalToon Render Effect. Cebas has chosen the form of a Render Effect to enable the user to interactively adjust the line properties without having to re-render the whole scene over and over again until you're satisfied with the result. The appearance of lines can be altered globally (Render Effect) or locally (finalToon material) by adjusting a number of separate line components of a 3D object. The components are: fold edges, crease edges, intersection edges, material ID edges, user defined visible edges and angle edges. Each component has a comprehensive submenu full of options, like the option to change the line style (continuous, dotted, dashed, etc.), show or hide hidden (non-visible) lines and advanced options like a noise function to create distorted lines. The individual line settings can be copied or instanced between different line components. Very handy, although I really miss an option to copy/instance global settings to local settings and vice versa. An other minor complaint I have is the lack of an Exclude Object(s) dialog in the global settings, in order to exclude certain objects from getting lines. In this version of finalToon you'll have to work around this by assigning a local material to each object and disabling lines locally. Continuing the finalToon features tour there's the option to create a line thickness increase related to an adjustable distance in the scene, and the powerful possibility to assign maps to a number of line properties, such as the line's color, thickness and opacity. Creating a nice varying line thickness and other line effects with the use of native Max maps is a piece of cake with finalToon. The possibilities are simply too numerous to sum up, which proves that Cebas has lived up to their reputation of producing very versatile plug-ins.

This is actually a fully threedimensional scene. As you can see, with the right FinalToon shading and line style settings you can make it look like a traditional ink drawing.

Let's take a look at the shaded side of the toon. The finalToon material is pretty straightforward and easy to understand. There are three shader components: Shadow, body and specular. Brightness values next to each component enable you to adjust only one main color and automatically vary the shadow and highlight color or map brightness accordingly. Each component can have its own map, you can accurately adjust the size of the component areas and the transition smoothness between the components. It would be nice if each component could also have a separate opacity, which is currently not the case. An interesting, original option of the finalToon shader offers a shader model based upon temperature coloring. In other words there are only two color components: warm and cold (respectively lit and unlit areas). This shader model can be used for subtle surface coloring that is useful as a basis for a clear line illustration. Rendering of the finalToon shader is performed by the default Max scanline renderer. Lines are then added to the image by the finalToon Render Effect.

VAN GOGH
Next to its impressive line capacities, finalToon's pièce de resistance is definitely its small but impressive collection of dedicated special effect maps. Let's start with the coolest map from the bunch: the finalToon Hatching map. Ever wanted to make your scene look like a Van Gogh creation? Then look no further than finalToon. The Hatching map makes it possible to create genuinely looking pen or pencil strokes along the flow of your 3D object's UVW coordinates. Again, Cebas offers a dozen of options to alter and refine the look of your hatched surface, such as an option to achieve crossed strokes. The hatching is based upon a bitmap of your choice, so you can create your own strokes in your favourite paint package and use the resulting bitmap as the basis for your 3D hatching. Every available spinner in the map is animatable, so with an animated Hatching map you can create very cool artistic surface motion.

An eye-pleasing example of finalToon's hatching feature, created by Thomas Pardun (www.3dmaxer.de).

FinalToon's other map types include a finalToon Flat Mirror map (for reflection on flat surfaces) and a finalToon Reflect/Refract map, both offering the cool feature of reflected lines. Both the finalToon Reflect/Refract map and the finalToon Thin Wall Refraction map offer the possibility of simple but effective refraction. All mentioned reflection and refraction maps can handle bump map distortion as well. FinalToon also comes with a material converter utility, in order to speed up the process of turning an old Max scene into a finalToon scene, as well as converting finalToon materials into standard Max materials. Last but not least, the lines Render Effect offers the 2D vector output of rendered surfaces and/or lines to Flash and Illustrator. As this is only a supplementary option for your convenience, don't expect to get the power of the latest Swift 3D Max as an added bonus. But for straightforward Flash and Illustrator applications finalToon's vector output is sufficient.

I guess this review makes it clear that finalToon is a gem of a plug-in for those searching for a fresh and dynamic rendering appearance that departs from the realistic look and feel of the usual 3D scenes. The plug-in feels quite solid. I did not encounter a single crash during my review sessions. Congratulations to the developers at Cebas for setting a new standard in versatile NPR.

Metin Seven

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