MEL Tools:

Jump To: Overview Workflow Features Screenshots: Interface Interface Expanded Example output: Sample Render 1 - credit Josh Davis Sample Render 2 - credit Robert Smith Sample Render 3 - credit Adam Schuman Sample Render 4 - credit Mike Hermes Samples property of TKO>Software, artist credited above

Overview

Leisure Suit Larry: Pocket Party was given an extremely short 4 month deadline!  The task at hand was to come up with a way to optimize the process of creating many cartoon style backplates for the adventure levels.  Since this deadline did not give adequate time to ramp up the artists on Mental Ray, this Tool was created as a simplied frontend to create toon shaded renders.  With a limited set of powerful controls, the artists could now focus their efforts on creating the art quickly instead of floundering with learning the tech.

Workflow

Artists created their 3d "stages" using Maya's polygon tools.  Using my NGage Viewer tool, they then locked in a camera angle which would become the final layout.  Next they would create a cartoon shading network using this tool.  They never had to open the hypershader or the multilister, because complete shader management was achieved through this iterface.  Once they were satisfied with shader tweaks, they would hit render button on the NGage viewer which would output the final render.  Tweaking shader sliders was necessary until they were mostly happy with the result.  Minor tweaks in photoshop would finalize the shot .

Features

• Simplfied user interface removed the complexity of MentalRay down to the bare necessities to achieve the desired cartoon effect.
• By gathering all tools into one intuitive location, artists didn't waist time searching for that special button to achieve a look.
• Create, Delete, Rename and Apply shaders via the GUI.  No need to open the Hypershade or Multilister.
• Many varried cartoon looks could be achieved given the ability to:
  • Individually control the surface area (coverage) of the highlight, tone and shadow
  • Control the blending smoothness of highlight and shadown transitions into tone
  • Add a separate texture into each of the highlight, tone and shadow channels
  • Control the opacity of this new texture per channel
• Used in conjunction with the NGage Viewer, tedious render settings were automated to achieve consistant qualtiy cartoon renders.  Artists never had to remember 100's of settings to change for each scene.