About ToonIt! speed.
ToonIt! is a quality vs. speed effect. It requires a lot of processing to create the effect and keep all the frames consistant over time. For Standard Definition (SD) footage, the render for the Roto Toon plugin is about 1 second a frame.
Version 1.1 update is released!
Our version 1.1 update speeds things up dramatically if you're on a multi-processor machine. Previously, ToonIt! 1.0 rendered about 2-3 seconds per frame. On June 3, 2008 we released this free update for exisiting customers. Please go to our Update Page for instructions to downlod and install. New customers will receive version 1.1 when they purchase ToonIt!.
Great performance takes awhile.
Other cartooning effects, including the Cartoon filter in our PlasmaFX plugin set, use Posterization algorithms to create a quick and dirty cartoon effect. This is pretty fast but doesn't create as nice of a look and there tends to be a lot of jitter from frame to frame.
One of the main features of ToonIt! is its ability to create a smooth animation over time with very little jitter. The smoothness and consistancy of the results is really only matched by hand rotoscoping. If you compare ToonIt vs. doing this effect by hand, it's actually a very fast process, even if you have to render out a sequence over night. Another wonderful aspect of ToonIt! is how it holds up when dealing with human faces. This is one of the most difficult kind of images to sell digitally and where most cartooning filters fall apart. ToonIt! provides pretty spectacular results and that is a primary reason its render time is high. |
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Tai Chi artist in cartoon mode. [play] (16.0 mb) |
Working in AE CS3...?
Those of you with After Effects CS3 can do more with your multi-processor advantage. AE's multi-processor support, the Render Frames Simultaneously checkbox in the Preferences, will usually supercede ToonIt!'s MP support anyway. So if you have enough RAM for AE to render multiple frames on each of your processors you're getting as good of performance from ToonIt as we'll be able to give you. Same goes for those of you using Nucleo Pro from Gridiron Software.
CS3 multi-processing is something of a black art as to how you get AE to fully use all your processors. What is happening is there will be a separate instance of AE running on each processor. Thus, you will need enough memory for all those instances of AE.
CS3 Memory & Cache prefs.Playing around with the settings in the Memory & Cache preference section will determine how many additional processors are used by the Multi-processing preference section. You don't usually want the Memory & Cache set to the defaults if you have a multi-processor machine. Changing the memory usage to 50 or 60% will free up memory to be used by other instances of AE. Also, setting the Cache to a low amount like 10% can also affect how many processors will be used. Of course, if you have a memory intensive project, say 4k comp with a ton of layers, setting your memory to 33% may not be a great idea. And you might want to wait until you're ready to render to change the cache settings, as a low setting will affect how much you can RAM preview. |
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ArtBeats stock footage of a hardworking office gal. [play] (5.0 mb)
The Roto Toon plugin produces a more glamourous version. [play] (6.5 mb) |
Other tips for speed.
As mentioned, CS3 multi-processing is a bit of a black art which we don't fully understand, so don't take our info as the definitive guide on AE multi-processor support. These are just things we've run into while fiddling with settings on the various dualcore and quadcore machines here at the Anarchy World HQ.
There are other ways to change your workflow to speed things up. For instance, the ToonIt! effect looks very similar at lower resolutions as it does at full resolution. You can set everything up at half (or even quarter) resolution and then wait until you go to lunch to render out the full sequence.
If you're trying to composite other effects on top of a ToonIt layer, render out the ToonIt effect and use the render in your timeline instead of the layer with ToonIt! applied to it. You can then turn off this rendered layer and use the original layer when you do the final render.
