Illustrate!™ 5.1
The artists' renderer

Illustrate! is the market-leading cel and illustration renderer. This latest version includes a completely new Flash rendering engine that provides many advanced rendering features including shading and support for intersecting objects.

 

> What's New?
> What is Illustrate!?

> Who uses Illustrate!?
> Features
> Gallery

Winner Editor's Choice Awards 2000
Internet Eye Magazine

Winner Annual Editor's Choice Awards 1999
3D Magazine

From its initial inception in 1994 Illustrate! has continued to deliver "best of class" technology ever since. Illustrate! remains the fastest and most advanced non-photorealistic renderer for 3DS MAX.

 

Test-Drive
Use the software for 30 days with ALL the features enabled. Download now!

Gallery
Visit the Gallery and see what amazing artwork and animations are possible with Illustrate!

Testamonials
See why professionals use and prefer Illustrate! More...

Books & Publications
Publications that feature Illustrate!

Price
Commerical - $395 USD
Educational - $99 USD

More...

Upgrading
See Upgrading for complete upgrade pricing.

System Requirements
Discreet 3DS MAX 4.x or Discreet VIZ 4.x

Technical Support
Digimation offers free technical support to all users. More..

Money-back guarantee
Digimation offers a 30 day money back guarantee.

What's New?

Illustrate! 5.1 extends on the amazing number of features present in Illustrate! 5.0. Among the many new features...

General

  • Designed for complete compatibility with 3DS MAX/VIZ 4.x. This includes support for the new hotkeys and menu methods.
  • Many minor outstanding issues resolved.

Flash Output

  • Completely new Flash rendering engine built from the ground up.
  • 40% faster than the previous rendering engine.
  • More robust output. The resulting animations can be easily imported into Macromedia Flash without further tweaking.
  • Shading is now supported. All light types and colors are supported.
  • Complex self-intersecting objects are supported.
  • Automatically handles separate objects that intersect. No longer need to set the Display Z Order.
  • The resulting animation can be automatically played using the Macromedia Player or other application.

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.

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.

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.

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...

Click on the image to see how Illustrate! renders 3D scenes directly to Flash

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

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.

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!