Penguin 2.0 for Rhino and AutoCAD
Freehand sketching, watercolor painting and cartoon-like rendering for Rhino and AutoCAD

Penguin brings freehand sketching, watercolor painting, cartoon-like rendering and technical illustration to Rhino and AutoCAD.

Penguin is a conceptual, sketch and cartoon, non-photometric scan line renderer. With Penguin you can create stylized images of your models with an artistic look for enhanced graphic and visual appeal.

Image courtesy of Rinus Roelofs

System requirements

• Rhino: Penguin 2.0 works with Rhino 4.0 and has the same hardware requirements as Rhino.
   
• AutoCAD: No special hardware is needed beyond what is required for AutoCAD. Penguin 2.0 works with 3D models of AutoCAD 2004 to 2008, including AutoCAD Architecture and AutoCAD Mechanical.

Details (New in Penguin 2.0)

• Conceptual, non-photorealistic renderer
   
• Easy to use, works seamlessly inside Rhino and AutoCAD
   
• Fast. Quickly produces an image in the desired resolution
   
• Uses OpenGL rendering for fast results
   
• Rhino or AutoCAD based. Render changes to the model immediately. You never need to export or start over
   
• Renders all models (except Flamingo or AccuRender plants).
   
• Batch rendering through scripts
   
• Antialiasing with user control
   
• Complements your project renderings with synthetic images
   
• Ability to create your own rendering styles
   
• Support for TGA, BMP, PCX, PNG and JPEG file formats
   
• Supports background bitmaps
  

• Improved user interface and closer integration with Rhino
  Penguin 2.0 is completely integrated with Rhino. All of its configuration dialogs can be accessed as any other Rhino dialog would be, inside Rhino properties or object properties.
  The dockable object properties panel updates while other commands run or while changing the selection.
   
• Supports dimensions, annotations and curves
  Penguin 2.0 supports any Rhino native object, including 2D objects like dimensions or curves. You can define specific settings for those objects like any other object.
   
• New shader engine
  Penguin 2.0 comes with new shaders and a new shader engine. Now shaders are separete into main shaders – you can only select one of those at the same time, and combinable shaders – you can add any one of those to the main shaders or use them standalone. Penguin 2.0 includes three main shaders (Cartoon, Artistic and Photo) and one combinable shader (Sketch). Given its scalable architecture, more shaders can easily be added in the future.
  
  - Cartoon: Cartoon is a shader that creates comic or cartoon-like images. It was already included in Penguin 1.0. In Penguin 2.0 you can define as many shade levels as you want, from two to thirty-two ( Penguin 1.0 had a fixed number of three ) and you can define any luminosity for each one from completely shadowed to completely lighted, without any constraints.
  
  - Artistic: The Artistic shader creates hatched images combining three different textures into the objects, one for shadow areas, one for normal areas, and one for highlighted areas. This shader has taken over the hatching features from the old sketch shader of Penguin 1.0, which continues now as a line sketcher. More textures have been added, and now you can add as many of them as you need.
  
  - Photo: This is a very simple shader which is basically a normal OpenGL render. It has been added to be able to mix it with other shaders.
  
  - Sketch: This is the former sketch shader, minus the filling, only the line rendering. As it’s a combinable shader, you can mix it with any other shader or use it by itself.

Image courtesy of Gijs de Zwart

• Supports shadows
  Penguin 2.0 supports cast shadows in any shader or mix of shaders and can save a separate bitmap with the shadow planes.
   
• Per object settings
  In Penguin 2.0 you can define specific settings for every object in the document. These settings appear in the object properties window, and are set up in the same way than the global document settings. You can select any shader to an object.
   
• Supports transparencies
  Objects are rendered taking their transparency property into account.
   
• Vector output
  Export a render into a vector format. The current supported formats are PS, EPS, AI, PDF and SVG. More formats could be added in the future.
   
• Real time display inside Rhino
  Penguin 2.0 adds a new viewport display option to Rhino. It is a real time approximation of what the render with Penguin would be.
   
• Hidden lines rendering
  When using the sketch shader, you can check hidden lines rendering, and you will see them in both the render and the real time display.

• Penguin global and object settings saved in the 3DM file
  Penguin settings are saved inside the files, so that you can share them between computers or restore those settings at any time in the future.
   
• Higher quality antialias option
  Penguin 2.0 medium antialias option is the equivalent of high antialias in Penguin 1.0. The new high antialias option has even more quality.
   
• New tutorial
  New tutorial that covers the essential use of Penguin 2.0 through these topics:
  
  - Render with the standard Penguin shader
  - High antialias
  - Background color
  - Cast shadows
  - Ambient light
  - Custom resolution
  - Save to file.