Digital Carvers Guild developed a nice set of shaders for Carrara Pro 5.x. Called “Eovia ShaderStyle”, the set is a powerful bundle of plug-ins comprised of Anything Goos, Shader Plus, Toon Pro and Wireframe Pro. This collection of shaders, lighting models and rendering tools enables Carrara users to enhance their creations quickly and easily. Each plug-in is tightly integrated within the framework of Carrara, so you’ll have a seamless working experience as you access these powerful add-ons.

Through Eovia, I received the set of shader plug-ins for review on IT-Enquirer. I must admit it was a bit of a puzzle to me initially where in the shader tree each plug-in could best be used, but even if you don’t know, experimenting with Carrara and these high-quality plug-ins is a lot of fun. Anything Goos adds a bit of dirt to otherwise perfect 3D models, while Toon Pro is the most fun of them all: it turns 3D art into cartoon-esque 3D drawings. Highly recommended and not expensive!

Toon! Pro is a cel shader and line renderer. It creates anti-aliased lines and combines cel with traditional and even GI rendering. The Toon! Pro Cel shader provides the cel look for objects in Carrara scenes. It’s the only shader in the set that has explicit application instructions: you must click the popup next to the Top Shader in the shader tree and select Toon! Pro cel. The rest is child’s play. I chose a terrain and it worked well, but Toon! Pro works best on complete scenes or on objects. That is when the cartoon style comes into its own.

There is an additional Toon! Pro Override effect, available on the Effects tab of the properties panel, which lets you override Line Effect set on the renderer’s UI. You would use this if you wanted an object in the scene to not have the Toon! Pro lines.

Wireframe Pro is the second shader plug-in for Carrara. The render, based on the same technology that powers Toon! Pro, provides high quality wireframe rendering that can be combined with traditional ray tracing or even GI rendering. The Wireframe Pro shader works within Carrara’s Texture room as a powerful tool for building your own wireframe shaders. Both tools can pull just the edges you define from the Vertex Modeler and Smart Quads can emulate the quads look for objects that aren’t built on quads.

Shaders with a Plus

Wireframe Pro is my personal favourite, coming in second right after Toon! Pro. Anything Goos is the third nicest plug-in. It adds imperfections to perfect 3D scenes and objects. It also makes it darn easy to add dirt to otherwise “clean” objects, like oil barrels and stuff. Anything Goos is invaluable if realism is your aim in life.

The Shaders Plus plug-in is a collection of lighting models. The instructions for this set were the least clear to me, and demanded the most experimenting. Experienced 3D artists will find the shaders’ usage probably natural, but if you don’t daily touch on 3D applications, chances are you will have to look for the best way to apply these shaders too. A bit more in-depth explanation would have been welcome.

Shaders Plus enables you to bevel your models with a shader, use procedural or projection mapped shaders on a bone animated mesh with Procedural Lock, or compose with images or video using a GI illumination enabled shadow catcher.

Alternative Luster simulates materials whose highlights are larger in one direction than they are in another. Anisotropic simulates materials whose highlights are larger in one direction than they are in another. Useful for metals, satin, and velvet materials. Bevel tricks the renderer into believing there is a chamfered or beveled edge where there is not. Flat is simply flat shading. GI Brightness controls how much the sub shader’s glow contributes to Global Illumination. GI Shadow Catcher lets you build a shadow catcher that responds to Global Illumination. Mask blocks out a shader with a solid color that is unaffected by lighting. Shadow Glow suppresses the glow channel when illuminated. Selective Lighting controls which lights interact with your shader.

Once I found out how to apply each one of them, I found the complete set to deliver high quality results when rendering. ShaderStyle is a nice add-in to Eovia, and it saves you a lot of time and working out how to achieve the effects without them. At 99.00 Euro, they’re inexpensive enough to quickly grab a copy and enjoy the many effects you can get with them.