Illustrate! 1.5

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THE SIMPSONS "Virtual Springfield" GAME

"Comprised of the whole town in 3D, and 2D character animation (just like the show, with the original voices).

The 3D portion was modelled entirely in 3DS4, and the VS Main Project File is, to my knowledge, one of, if not _the_, largest single .PRJs ever created. Comprised of over 100 city blocks holding more than 500 individual buildings, most of which were modelled from the actual model sheets used on the TV show, the final Main Project File totals nearly 8 million polys. 84 cameras are animated to traverse the nearly ten scale miles of two-way-navigable streets.

More than 1100 individual flics were rendered, all using Dave Gould's Illustrate! IPAS to achieve the cartoon-in-3D look to match the show."

Sean Platter [Project Director] - Vortex Media Arts

 

Introduction

With Illustrate! you can now fool your clients into thinking you've got a full time animation staff at your disposal. Illustrate! works by using your 3D objects as the basis for creating 2D contour outlines from the parameters you set, to produce stunning illustrated images. These images can also be composited with 3D Studio photorealistic renderings for a truly unique look!

Feature List

Welcome to the Illustrate! IPAS Plug-in. The plug-in that makes you an instant artist in no time. This plug-in is designed to produce illustrated images from inside 3DS using your existing scenes. It works as an AXP that takes the objects and view parameters(camera, user view, etc) and then produces an illustrated image using a proprietary rendering engine. You can define such diverse art materials as brushes, paints, strokes, and papers that will give you total control over the final illustration. These images can also be composited with 3DS images using the included IXP, thereby allowing for a combination of both photorealistic and illustrated(non-photorealistic) images in your final images and animations.

Minimum Requirements

• Autodesk 3D Studio R4.0 or later with the same memory and hardware requirements.
• Minimum 800x600x15bit display.

Main Features

• Extremely simple to use. All drawing tool dialog boxes provide instant visual feedback. Change an option and the result will be shown instantly. A "one-stop map" box allows access to all possible map images without having to search through multiple directories.
• Improved interface design that takes the best features of Windows 95 and makes them available in 3DS. Preview almost all object types on screen interactively. Including thumbnail previews of images, sliders, check boxes, enhanced color picker, and so on.
• Proprietary rendering engine designed specifically for producing illustrations. This includes the ability to produce accurate hidden-line removal illustrations for technical and artistic purposes.
• Define your own art material library containing all your own defined brushes, paints, strokes and papers to use in an infinite combination on your various scenes.

Rendering

• Field rendering for output to video.
• Network rendering supported.
• Define individual background paper.
• Send output image to a pop-up window for quick experimentation or to Video Post for further compositing and editing.
• Specify the exact near and far clipping planes(3DS only allows you to specify the near plane).

Objects

• Select individually which objects to illustrate.
• Assign each object an individual drawing style, so you can be Picasso and Da Vinci in the same image.

Art Materials

The art materials library allows you to create a comprehensive toolkit of art materials and tools for use in your illustrations. You have all the standard creation and editing features as well as the ability to store the materials to file. They can then later be merged into other scenes giving you the power define libraries of materials that can be applied to different scenes effortless. The following materials are available:

Style

The style defines the way in which each individual object will be drawn.

Surface

• Assign a paint object to drawn the surface of the object or use the default 3DS material that is assigned to the object. The material colour can come from the ambient, diffuse or specular colours of the material.
• The transparency of the object can either use the transparency assigned to the 3DS material or you can set it interactively with any variation between opaque and wireframe.

Edges

• Possibly one of the most powerful features of the plug-in is to classify different edge types and assign an individual brush, paint, and stroke object to it. This gives total control over the drawing of edge lines.
• Each of these edge types are supported and can be mixed and matched within a single object:

All - includes all edges

3DS defined - edges defined as visible by 3DS(Display/Edges/Visible)

Material Change - edge where material is different on both sides

Interior Outline - outline interior to the object

Contour Outline - outline exterior to the object

• For each of these edge types you can assign an individual brush, paint, and stroke to be used when the line is either visible or hidden. You can therefore quickly show hidden lines with a dashed or dotted style and others solid. You can also set whether hidden or visible lines for each edge type will be drawn.
• Prioritize the edges types so certain edges are classified before others and therefore are given a higher precedence.
• Activate and disactive the drawing of different edges types for quick control and experimentation.
• The depth-cue brush opacity feature allows you to increase or decrease the opacity of a brush with distance. You specify the opacity scale at the near and far ranges of the camera.
• With the brush-paint dipping controls you can decide precisely where in the paint the brush will be dipped. Set the location to centre to have the brush dipped in the centre of the paint or tile which allows you to "stamp" a paint image over another or create a mosaic effect. If this isn't enough you can increase the variation which randomizes the location of the brush dipping so you can get more natural or wilder results.

Brush

A brush essentially defines the footprint used to paint with. The brush dialog box allows for real-time editing of brush options. Change an option and you get direct feedback as to what the final brush will look like. The brush options are:

Shape

• Choice between two predefined shapes; Circle or Square.
• Define the size of the circle interactively.
• Choose whether the shape is filled or empty.

Image

• Define a bitmap as the brush shape. This gives you an infinite number of possible brush styles and designs.

Overall

• Define the overall opacity of the brush to get softer or harder brush strokes.
• Set the softness/sharpness of the brush to get smooth or hard brush dabs.

Paint

Now that you've got your brush defined, dip it in some paint. The paint options allows an incredibly vast range of effects including many found in your favorite image editors. The paint options are:

Color

• The paint color can either be a solid color or you can use a bitmap from which the color is sampled. This gives an infinite range of possible paints. No to mention the ability to sample the image background which combined with a brush gives great painted effects.

Compositing

• Choose which individual color channels to composite with; Red, Green, or Blue or a combination therein.
• Different methods include: Normal, Subtract, Noise, Multiply, Add.
• Define the strength of each different method using the Amount slider to get total control over the degree of the effect.

Stroke

Having the brush in hand with paint smeared on the end, now define how you are going to "dab" the brush to define the strokes. The stroke options are:

Spacing

• Define the spacing of brush dabs as a percentage of the brush size. This provides brush indepedent spacing and accurate control.

Pattern

• Define "line-styles" by choosing from one of the predefined: Solid, Dashed, Dotted, Centre, or define your own by marking out a line of down/up markers that the brush will adhere to along the stroke.

Paper

Now you are ready to paint. But paint on what? This is where the paper object comes into play. The paper object defines the "background" on which the illustration is drawn. Its options are:

Prepaint

• Define a paint object used to "fill in" the paper surface.

Grain

• Specify a texture image to use as the paper grain. Set how strong the grain is and how shiny it appears.
• Set the light color and its position in terms of an angle and elevation, thereby giving incredibly accurate placement and control over the final paper appearance.

Main Dialog Box

Edit Style Dialog Box