Maneki® — Fast, consistent, all-in-one Anime toon & outline rendering solution for next generation, high quality, content in Autodesk® Maya®. Maneki® is the core technology used for the BLAME! movie.
Maneki introduces Photo-Surreal Rendering "PSR" — the neologism for the stylistic intersection of photo-real (PBR) and non-photoreal (NPR). It combines modern lighting, shading and path tracing techniques with the traditional design elements of Japanese Anime, featuring unique, production-proven, features.
Maneki is tightly integrated in Autodesk Maya with a set of materials, lights, procedural patterns and geometry processing tools. While designed to produce beauty imagery straight out of the renderer and minimize the work done in compositing, it also introduces a novel re-coloring workflow for directors via Maneki Composer for Nuke.
Made in Japan by J CUBE Inc, distributed with 3Delight.
Maneki is named after our mascot “Maneki Neko” (招き猫), literally translated as the beckoning cat.
He typically resides by the windowsill of homes, shops & offices, and has become a pop icon not only in Japan, its original birthplace, but also in China and worldwide. With his welcoming pose, intriguing character and unmatched cuteness (kawaii/かわいい) we invite you to try our rendering technology.
Oh, and if you'd like to say "Hello!" you can find him as a regular on Twitter →
Maneki® — a growing number of high-profile Films and Netflix Original TV Series:
2016
.jpg)
2017
2018
2019
.jpg)
2019
2019
2019
2019
Maneki — Commercial Pricing
Maneki is sold under yearly subscription or monthly rental. The pricing includes 3Delight licenses.
Floating licenses are distributed by a license server for concurrent use over a network.
If you already own a matching number of 3Delight licenses, please contact us for ad-hoc pricing.
For quotes & orders contact sales
| Maneki for Maya | Nº Licenses | 1 Year Subscription |
|---|---|---|
| 25+ | US$ 650/lic | |
| 50+ | US$ 600/lic | |
| 100+ | US$ 550/lic | |
| 200+ | US$ 500/lic | |
| 500+ | Contact sales |
| Maneki Composer For Nuke | Nº Licenses | 1 Year Subscription | Info |
|---|---|---|---|
| (optional, sold separately) | 1 | US$ 9000/lic | Contact sales |
| Maneki for Maya | Nº Licenses | 1 Year Subscription |
|---|---|---|
| 25+ | JPY 90000/lic | |
| 50+ | JPY 83000/lic | |
| 100+ | JPY 76000/lic | |
| 200+ | JPY 69000/lic | |
| 500+ | Contact sales |
| Maneki Composer For Nuke | Nº Licenses | 1 Year Subscription | Info |
|---|---|---|---|
| (optional, sold separately) | 1 | JPY 1250000/lic | Contact sales |
| Product | Nº Licenses | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Maneki® for Maya | Site License Only | E-Mail Sales |
| Maneki® Composer for Nuke | Site License Only | E-Mail Sales |
Additional Consulting Services
We provide optional consulting services for lookdev, lighting and surfacing at a convenient weekly rate.
Contact sales for pricing and further details.
Maneki — Key Features
Super-Fast Next-Gen HD/4K Anime
Ultra high definition, clean, fast, memory efficient, consistent HD/4K output of colors & outlines. Final imagery straight out of the renderer in one single pass, or output elements to individual AOVs for compositing. With full progressive rendering IPR support.
Full 3D Workflow
Both characters and backgrounds can be in 3D, or you can use matte painted backgrounds and projections on 3D geometry, or 2D hand-painted characters over 3D backgrounds. Thanks to 3D a full-range of camera movements is now possible, without the restrictions of traditional 2D pans/zooms.
Outlines & Detection, on any AOV
High-quality, stable (no animation flicker), sub-sampled outline detection on arbitrary Image Layers (or AOVs). Outlines can be lit/shadowed, textured, scaled, displaced (all according to UVs) with support for depth-fading & depth-consistency.
Special Tools for Anime Eyes & Hair
Powerful procedural patterns for Anime-style eyes and hair, able to replicate a wide range of looks for eyes and hair via streamlined parametric controls. Full progressive IPR support for quick interactions.
Anime Features & "PSR" styles
Achieve multiple styles with the same tools: from PBR/photoreal to NPR/Anime, and any PSR mix between the two. Maneki features special Anime shading simplification of color regions, shadows, highlights & reflections.
Next-Generation Anime Re-Coloring Workflow
Re-coloring and color-correction workflow with Maneki Composer for Nuke: efficiently re-color shots (including both shading and outlines) in Nuke and sync-back color changes with Maya to reproduce final imagery. This allows for quick interaction and parallel team work with the color director without the need for texture-based "color pallettes".
Local & Global Additive Lights
Special local & global additive lights for ultimate control, featuring: powerful rim lights with unique shadow masking feature, gradient lights, distance-based coloring lights, real area lights for fill/bounce, smooth gradients, reflections etc.
Toon Shading, Gradients & Hatching
Multi-tonal toon shading with stepped quantization & smooth gradients: works on computed brightness and allows light absorption. Powerful "hatching" features to break the tonal continuity with full support for procedural textures.
Physically-Based
Path tracing PBR techniques can be used with NPR for the first time: indirect illumination, environemnt occlusion, Image-Based Lighting, Sub-Surface Scattering, glossy reflections, emission/incandescence and real area lights.
Geometry & Outline Displacement
High-quality sub-pixel displacement of geometry and, accordingly, of outlines. Displacement is so fast that relying on low-quality effects such as bump maps or normal maps becomes completely unnecessary.
Multi-cam VR/Stereo Ready
Efficient, concurrent, multi-camera rendering for stereo & VR is fully supported so that rendering two, or more, views at once is optimized for render time. Programmable camera lens shader can provide any desirable lens deformation.
Color-managed HDR Linear Workflow
Complete color-managed linear worflow pipeline for both colors, textures, lights and outlines. This allows for ultra-accurate color rendition and safe interchange of data with linear compositing applications such as Nuke aswell as powerful re-coloring of high dyamic range EXR data in applications such as DaVinci Resolve.
Made by
Some of our customers
Powered by
Copyright © 2020 J CUBE Inc. Yokohama, Japan. All Rights Reserved.
Maneki® and the Maneki® logo are registered trademarks of J Cube Inc.
The 
Maneki logo is designed by @pberto.