ToonMAX - The Cartoon Plugin for 3DSMAX
Latest ToonMAX Beta: Beta
1
What is ToonMAX?
ToonMAX is another freeware plugin developed by me, SS|nferno. This
one was more for fun and experience, but I think it's rather neat and fun
to play around with. What it does is take a rendered image and turn it
into a cartoon-like image, much like a comic book, or a anime movie or
something. The idea comes from a lightwave plugin (it was AA who thought
of making one for MAX). It took me about 4 or 5 hours to write, but mostly
because I didn't realize that I had set up my resource dialog box incorrectly
and that it was saying "ICustEdit" instead of "CustEdit".
As if any of you know what that means. Anyway, It was quite simple to make,
and the latest version is pretty effective, although I plan on spending
at least another 24 hours (that's like 2 hours of work time if I'm on irc)
on fixing it up and improving it. Try it out, it's kinda fun.
Instructions
To use this plugin, just copy the cartoon.flt file to your plugins directory,
and then load up a scene. When you want to render it, go to video post,
and get the scene for the first event, and then the filter for the second
event. When you load the filter, you can set it up. If you call the setup
dialog, you'll get some parameters. These take a little explaining.
- Normal threshold is the sin value of the angle between two normals
such that the normals are considered far enough apart to warrant an edge
being drawn between them. 1 means draw lines EVERY time the normal
changes, -1 means never draw a line based on normals. 0.6 is usually a
good value, but you can experiemnt.
- Z Buffer threshold is the Z value that two points have to vary by in
order to warrant a line between them. I'm not sure what these units are
but I guess you can experiement with your own scene...
- Color Complexity is how many different colors are in the final toon
image. The exact amount of colors is the number here cubed. So if you want
a regular true color image, pick 256. If you want a 8 color image, pick
2. Picking 1 might be somewhat disasterous.
Examples
- Tie fighters 1
& 2
- The first pic shows a regular boring bland (as if a tie fighter could
be boring) tie fighter. The second pic shows the same tie fighter after
it's been processed through my Image Filter. Note the banding effects and
the outlines.
Downloads
