Using the Ink n Paint Material

Using the Ink ‘n’ Paint Material

Although it may seem silly, many different production houses use Max to create 2D line-drawn cartoons. This is accomplished using the Ink ‘n’ Paint material. Traditionally cartoons have been drawn by hand using a paper and pen. Then animation houses found that, using computers, you can fill in a cartoon feature easily, but using a 3D program like Max with its ability to animate using keyframes simplifies the animation task even further. The difference is in how the objects are rendered; the Ink ‘n’ Paint material controls this.

With the Ink ‘n’ Paint material selected, several rollouts appear, including the Basic Material Extensions. This rollout includes options for making the material 2-Sided, enabling a Face Map, and making the material Faceted. Other options cause the background to be foggy when not painting and make the alpha channel opaque. Maps are available for Bump and Displacement.

Controlling paint and ink

The Paint Controls rollout includes settings for how the paint (or colors inside the ink outline) is applied. You can specify colors for the Lighted, Shaded, and Highlight colors. The Lighted color is used for sections of the material that face the scene lights, the Shaded color is used for sections that are in the shadows, and the Highlight color is for the specular highlights. For each color, you can also select a map with an amount value. The Paint Levels value sets the number of colors that are used to color the material. The Glossiness value determines the size of the highlight. Figure 22.7 shows materials with Paint Level values of 2-6.

Figure 22.7: Use the Paint Level value to set the number of colors used in the material

The Ink Controls rollout includes an Ink option that you can use to turn off the outlining ink completely. You can also set the Ink Quality to values between 1 and 3. The higher quality values trace the edges better, but require more time to complete. The width of the ink strokes can be set to Variable Width or a Clamped width. For each option, you can select a Minimum ink width and if Variable Width is enabled, you can choose a Maximum ink width. For the Variable Width option, the stroke changes so that the minimum setting is used in lighted areas and the maximum width is used in shaded areas. This helps to accentuate the lighting. You can also apply the ink width as a map. Figure 22.8 shows the Ink ‘n’ Paint material applied to a cube. The first image shows a standard material; the second image has the Ink option disabled. The last three images have Width values of 1, 10, and 30.

Figure 22.8: The Paint Level value sets the number of colors used in the material

The rest of the options in the Ink Controls rollout are enabled to control where the ink is applied to the object. Options include Outline, Overlap, Underlap, Smoothing Group, and Material ID. For each of these options (except for Smoothing Group), you can alter a Bias value that can adjust intersecting edges. Each of these options can be applied as a map.

Tutorial: Cartooning a turtle

As an example of the Ink ‘n’ Paint material, we'll render a cartoonish turtle model created by Zygote Media as a cartoon that is fit for the Sunday papers.

To apply the Ink ‘n’ Paint material to a turtle model, follow these steps:

1. Open the  Cartoon turtle.max file from the Chap 22 directory on the DVD. This file includes a simple turtle model.

2. With the turtle model selected, open the Material Editor by choosing the Rendering Material Editor menu command (or by pressing the M key).

   The turtle's current materials are displayed.

3. In the Utility panel, select the Color Clipboard button, and in the Color Clipboard rollout, click the New Floater button. A palette of colors opens. Drag the Diffuse colors from each current material to the Color Clipboard for each of the five materials.

4. Select the first sample slot, and click on the Material Type button to open the Material/Map Browser. Double-click the Ink ‘n’ Paint material type from the list. Then drag the corresponding color from the Color Clipboard, and copy it in the Lighted color swatch of the Paint Controls rollout. Repeat this for each of the five materials.

5. Open and render the Perspective viewport using the Render Scene dialog box.

Figure 22.9 shows the resulting cartoon.

Figure 22.9: Cartooning made easy with the Ink ‘n’ Paint material