For the use of Blender Cel shading, the initial setting was to reduce the workload of the artists and shorten the production cycle while maintaining the art style of 2D animation. As technology continues to mature, Blender Cel shading is becoming more and more widespread. The Japanese animation industry is particularly keen on Blender Cel shading and has developed various auxiliary tools.

In April this year, Japanese developer P Softhouse (PSOFT) released Pencil+ 4 Line for the open-source software Blender, which is a new plug-in based on its non-realistic rendering toolset Pencil+. It generates rendering outlines around 3D objects to simulate traditional animation line styles in the 3D workflow, and can exchange data with 3ds Max, Maya and the Unity version of Pencil+. The Pencil+ toolset is widely used in the Japanese animation industry and is already available for 3ds Max, Maya and Unity; and the new plug-in launched this time allows it to be integrated with Blender.

Pencil+ 4 Line for Blender can generate outlines around 3D objects, simulating the appearance of hand-drawn outlines. Users can control line properties (such as width, color, brush angle, opacity, and blending mode) by setting parameters in the UI, or gain more control through the node editor.

Compared with Blender's native tools, Pencil+ 4 Line can provide more control over line styles, making it easier to switch to Blender from other DCC applications, or integrate Blender into your own pipeline.

Pencil+ 4.05 adds Viewport rendering and line drawing functions. Viewport rendering can now be done while drawing lines and output to a file; animations can also be output as sequence images for easy inspection.

Pencil+ 4.05 adjusts the drawing color of the viewport line preview based on the color-managed display device, exposure, and gamma, improving the accuracy of rendering line colors.

Pencil+ 4.05 system requirements:

Windows 10/11

Blender 3.0 or higher

Download directions:

https://docs.psoft.co.jp/plb400w/en/4.0.5/install/install.html

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