PSOFT Pencil+ Plugin: How ‘Your Name’ Made Its CG Elements Look Like 2D Artwork

What do Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name, Hideaki Anno’s Rebuild of Evangelion movie series, and the latest season of Rooster Teeth’s RWBY have in common?

All of those productions, not to mention a lot of others, have used the 3ds Max plugin PSOFT Pencil+.

The non-photorealistic rendering plugin is designed to serve a specific purpose: making 3D cg animation look like traditional media, whether it’s a flat cel-shaded look or a textured pencil sketch style. In a film like Your Name, although the characters were drawn, there were around 180 shots that incorporated cg elements including vehicles and birds, for which Pencil+ was used.

A few days ago, Japanese software maker P Softhouse released the first major upgrade to the software in seven years, PSOFT Pencil+ 4. The upgrade of the software offers speed increases, Nitrous viewport display, material penetration, and new edge detection settings, among other features.

Here’s a video that shows the new features:

A full feature list can be found on PSOFT’s website. Pencil+ 4 is priced at 60,480 yen (approximately $540 USD).