Maneki is powered by and includes the 3Delight path tracer, its plug-in integration in Autodesk Maya and The Foundry Katana and its unique rendering capabilities developed with particular attention for the needs of the Japanese Anime (アニメ) content production.
3Delight — Key Features for Anime
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, on-the-fly, in one single pass, or output elements to individual AOVs for compositing. Full IPR support also with outlines.
High Quality Pixel Filtering
High-quality multi-pixel filtering with full support of high-order kernels such as
Sub-sampled Outline Detection on Any AOV
High-quality, stable (no animation flicker) sub-sampled, thresholded outline detection on arbitrary AOVs. Outline can be lit/shadowed, textured, scaled, displaced (all according to UVs) with support for depth-fading and depth-consistency. Outline rendering takes virtually no additional time.
Analytic Subdivs & Displacement
3Delight unique analytic tessellation of Catmull-Clark subdivision surfaces and of displacement is a key feature granting no outline flickering in animation. It also provides for super high-quality sub-pixel detection on displaced geometry and for fast rigging and animation in Maya since there is no need for high polygon count meshes.
Decoupling of outline detect/draw
Powerful, WYSIWYG, arbitrary AOV-based decoupling of outline detection and generation
: typically, one or more layers receive outlines generated from a number of other layers such as
Multi-Masks
Ability to simultaneously output multiple masks, in a single render with virtually no impact on rendering time, and selectively run outline detection on those. Multi-Masks are defined by Maya sets and can arbitrarily contain objects, materials or both. This feature was co-developed with J Cube, see the Multi-Masks technical memo PDF.
Physically-Based Rendering
Path tracing PBR techniques can be used with NPR for the first time: indirect diffuse/specular, occlusion, image-based lighting, sub-surface scattering, glossy reflections, emission/incandescence and real geometric area lights for soft fills ad soft shadows.
Geometry & Outline Displacement
High-quality sub-pixel displacement of geometry and, accordingly, of its outlines. Displacement is so fast that it makes completely unnecessary to rely on low-quality effects such as bump maps. If necessary bumps can still be achieved using the very same Displacement node for ease of use and predictable results.
VR/Stereo Multi-cam Ready
Efficient, concurrent, multi-camera rendering for Stereo & VR cameras is fully supported so that rendering two views takes only little additional render time. Programmable camera lens shader can provide any lens deformation (OSL path tracer only).
Color-managed Linear Workflow
Complete color-managed linear workflow pipeline for both colors, textures and outlines. This allows for ultra-accurate color rendition and safe interchange of data with linear compositing applications such as Nuke.
