What
is Illustrate!?
Illustrate! is a non-photorealistic
renderer.
It allows you to render your 3D scene in a variety of artistic styles.
The most common is the cel or toon
style where the objects are rendered with a single or limited
number of colors and the edges are drawn with a line. This version of
Illustrate! is particularly adept at this style of rendering. It includes
a lot of advanced features for creating film resolution cel renderings.
Illustrate! also renders illustrations.
Most commonly these are technical illustrations with hidden-lines eliminated.
Illustrate! supports a huge variety of line styles so you can create complex
illustrations.
One amazing feature of Illustrate! is its ability to render these styles
out to vector artwork. It currently
supports Shockwave Flash, Adobe Illustrator, and Autocad DXF output. This
allows you render your 3D scenes for displaying on the Internet or for
inclusion with other vector graphics.
Below are some examples of the many rendering styles that Illustrate!
supports...
To see more styles visit the Gallery.
History
Illustrate! was first released in 1994(3DS R3 for MS-DOS)
and has provided the "best of class" technology ever since.
Over the years many competing companies have since discontinued their
renderers while Illustrate! has gone from strength to strength. Illustrate!
is often the first to bring you the newest cutting-edge technologies.
Amongst Illustrate!'s many "firsts":
- 1st cel and illustration
renderer for 3DS MAX 4.x, 3DS MAX 3.x., 3DS MAX 1.x, 3DS DOS.
- 1st vector renderer for
3DS MAX, including the first Shockwave Flash and Adobe Illustrator output.
- 1st renderer to support
reflections and refractions in toon shading.
- 1st renderer to support
vector output of variable line weights.
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Who
uses Illustrate!?
Illustrate! is the market-leading non-photorealistic renderer for 3DS
MAX. It was first released in 1994(3DS R3 for MS-DOS) and has provided
the "best of class" technology ever since.
Companies
Illustrate! is used by some of the world's leading companies including
Walt Disney Imagineering, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Aardman Animation
Studios, IBM, Microsoft, NASA, MGM, Lockheed Martin, Westwood Studios,
British Aerospace, Ex Machina, and many others.
Universities
Some of the leading universities and institutions are teaching Illustrate!
including Sheridan Center for Animation and Emerging Technologies(Sheridan
College), California State University, Pratt Institute(New York), University
of Montana, Brown University and many others.
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Features
Illustrate! has an extensive list of features. For a complete list of
new features refer to What's New?
From its initial inception in 1994 the Illustrate! renderer has grown
and advanced, continually bringing you the best cutting-edge non-photorealistic
rendering technology. This latest version pushes that envelope far beyond
anything available today. Illustrate! boasts a wide range of features
that help animators and artists produce professional artwork with a minimum
of time and effort.
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Web Designing
Illustrate! is going to make your web site explode! You can now
render, directly from 3DS MAX, a Shockwave
Flash animation of your scene. Just click Render and
Illustrate! will produce a Flash file that is not only incredibly
small but highly optimized for the fastest playback. Imagine the
possiblities...
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Click on the image to see how Illustrate! renders
3D scenes directly to Flash
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Quick and Easy
Don't want to learn another plugin? Illustrate! includes the Rendering
Wizard that sets up your output simply and easily. Just answer
a series of questions, including output format, background color, and
so on, and Illustrate! prepares the rendering for you. All that remains
is for you to click on Render. If you do want to delve deeper into the
enormous possiblities offered by Illustrate! the new advanced help system
will provide you with all the information you need, including tutorials
and examples
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Illustrations
Want to show your client a precise vector drawing of your scene?
Illustrate! is designed to coexist with the MAX photorealistic renderer
so that you can render an illustration or a normal MAX rendering
from the same scene. Just select the vector output format(Shockwave
Flash, Adobe Illustrator, and Autocad DXF) and Illustrate!
will produce the artwork including individual line colors, style,
and weights.
For technical illustrations you can choose from a wide range of
line styles including Center, Dashed, Phantom, Border, Divide, or
create your own. Illustrate! includes the ability to draw the lines
where two objects intersect or a single object self-intersects.
Even Autocad is missing this much needed feature. In addition to
lines of Surface Intersection, you can draw the following edge types:
Folds, Creases, MAX Defined, Material Change, and the object's precise
Silhouette.
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Cel and Toons
Illustrate! has been designed to produce high-quality film-resolution
cel animations. Many companies are now using Illustrate! to create
full feature length animated films.
Your models can be rendered with the advanced Cel
Shader. It supports such unique features as reflections
and refractions in the final toon shading. This is in addition to
supporting ALL the 3DS MAX map and texture types. Additional effects
such as combining 3D shading and light tinting are also available.
Illustrate! will render lines with variable
weights. All lines are drawn with the best anti-aliasing
quality and precision possible. You have total control over line
weight, color and style for ANY edge in your model.
Lines and surfaces can be rendered in separate passes to separate
files for compositing later or combined automatically in Illustrate!
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