A talk show was held on YouTube about the commercial NPR renderers “PSOFT Pencil+ 4 Render App” and “PSOFT Pencil+ 4 Line for Blender” released on April 18, 2023.
By Hideaki Anno’s company “Studio Khara”, known for the Evangelion movie with PSOFT software developers.
In the exchange held in Japanese, technical standards such as the quality of draw lines were discussed with actual examples.
“PSOFT Pencil+ 4 Render App” is a standalone commercial NPR Line renderer,
and “PSOFT Pencil+ 4 Line for Blender” is a free plug-in that uses this renderer.
Oh,Yes. It is really a flashback for 3ds Max users.
Based on my experience with Japanese commercial animation,
they are still using 3ds max and very recently switched to Blender.
Some studios use Maya,
but a user says some features of Pencil+4 for Maya are inferior to those of his 3dsmax version.
The advent of the Blender version this time is evaluated as an advantage in that the line can be checked in the real-time viewport.
This needs some context- the Blender plug-in is free, but you can’t actually do anything with it unless you buy a rendering license. I’ve spent a lot of time exploring this on their website, and the blender plugin does not work without a paid license. It’s really a shame, I can’t make paying 500 USD worth it for this
Yes, that’s why the PSOFT Pencil+ 4 Drawing App renderer is commercial.
PSOFT Pencil+ 4 Line for Blender as GUI edit tool for Drawing App.
Many people think that 500 USD is a little high. line only !
However, in the world of Japanese commercial animation, there are olddata and know-how that have been used since the 2000s, and it is not necessarily easy to replace this with another.
This soft is like a high-end pen used by professionals.
A perpetual license allows you to keep your legacy assets
intact compared to an Autodesk Ecosystem Subscription.
At this price, some companies find value in the 3ds Max npr assets that drive there Blender.
Don’t get me wrong, I fully recognize the value of Pencil+ 4, I just don’t think they’ll see much Blender use. Currently, it’s the most expensive Blender add-on you can buy by a lot - the next most expensive is 400 USD, and it hasn’t sold a single copy: https://blendermarket.com/products/innovision
The next most expensive Blender add-on after that is 199 USD, and it’s sold 5100 copies, so it seems like 200 USD is about the upper threshold most Blender users are willing to pay for an add-on. It’ll be interesting to see what happens
There are some alternative for this kind of NPR solution which is nice but
at this time,in certain countries,Pencil 4+ has become a must-have for Pro.
Like " NVIDIA-TAX ".
In my experience, 500 USD is a OK amount for professionals.
I’m paying more than that for other software subscriptions.
It’s a perpetual license, so will probably get it back in a month or a year by work.
Apart from the price of the software, the more users who use it, the more things that will be returned to the Blender community.
We’ve seen Blender in the professional pipeline lately, and if it’s a big company, it could become a patron of Blender.
The fact khara and studioQ is a Japanese animation company, but is a patron.
If it contributes to the development costs of Blender and the maintenance of the community,
it is a positive change and I hope so.
It’s listed as a feature for the Maya and Max versions, but cannot export vectors in Blender. Blender can show Show Lines in Viewport, while Max can’t … so it looks like some features depend on what the host app offers a framework for.
As Blender doesn’t export renders as EPS/vector, I’m guessing that’s why Pencil does not either (as Pencil is using Blender for the final output, not doing the full render/export externally).
I maintain my former point that for 500 USD a pop, they absolutely could have added vector export. The functionality is already there in Blender, it would have been simple to hook into it. I’m still not convinced that this is worth anything near the price.
As it stands, users are paying 500 USD for… faster line rendering than grease pencil (admittedly, a huge selling point), and slightly more customization options, but no vector export, unlike grease pencil, which negates at least one point in Pencil+ 4’s favor. Pencil+ 4, then, is only ahead by one point of grease pencil, and 500 USD is a lot of money for a one point lead
Yes, but not as an animation… or does it? (I’ve tried doing so, all I could do was export a still from that menu - quite possibly user error/ignorance on my part).
Pencil+ 4, then, is only ahead by one point of grease pencil
Excellent points. You can export the grease pencil as an animation with a simple Python script, but it would be nice to have it a little less clunky for sure. And yeah, I do love the beautiful AA from Pencil+ 4. Honestly, I’ll probably buy a license eventually- years from now, since I’m currently saving up for a 24" drawing tablet instead. It’s just a little frustrating that the best line solution for Blender costs as much as a budget GPU, 2 FHD monitors, or even a budget computer (not a great one, but you can absolutely get a laptop for 500 dollars)
Don’t get me wrong, I’m currently ruining my back hunched over a 11" drawing tablet for hours every day If I ever have a windfall of a few million dollars, I’ll be sure to send you a few thousand so we can both get out of this suffering
From my experience is a feature that is not so easy expected.
Last year I had to do a job for a complex architecture job and the output must be vectorial.
My research points me to the 3dsmax plugin called Illustrate but trust me, around the world there aren’t so many solutions that support the most used 3d app features.
Anyway, I agree thinking that for a professional package like this, a vector output should be added.
I hope they’ll add, if not present at the moment.
Well… traditionally 3D software was meant to make… images. And of course there were curves used… but to use 3D software to use it to project those 3D vectorial art (back) on the 2D (screen) plane and further works with this… … is fairly new i think… okay IDK of any other software using something like the (newer) grease pencil ( the old one is now the annotate tool )…
You might be pleased on this - just got this email:
“PSOFT Pencil+ 4 Line for Blender” version 4.0.3 was released today.
This update adds the new “vector file output” functionality.
Please update the “PSOFT Pencil+ 4 Render App” to version 4.0.1 in order to use the new add-on.
Changes since the previous version:
[New features] Adds functionality to output lines to the EPS format. Adds functionality to output lines to the PLD format.
[Modifications]
Fixed a problem where lines were not drawn correctly when using multiple view layers.
Fixed a problem where lines were not drawn correctly when the camera was scaled.
Fixed a problem where holdouts were not properly reflected on line drawing under specific conditions.
I am an addon collector and NPR lover. Usually Pencil+ would be a must buy, but yes, the price is too high for the Blender ecosystem.
Of course the price is reasonable for professional users - but that’s only a fraction of the tappable market in Blender.
If a non-commercial license is sold for 1/4 of the price, I’ll jump at it.
]
If I ever have a windfall of a few million dollars, I’ll be sure to send you a few thousand so we can both get out of this suffering