Getting Started

Start here for a basic introduction to using Megurine Luka with Shade. This is not intended to be an introduction to modeling, animation or rendering in Shade. Please refer to the Shade User Guide included with Shade or available on the Shade wiki at http://www.shadecamp.net.

You can click on some images to enlarge them

Creating Still Images of Luka with Shade

1: Opening Luka

To start using Luka, locate, then double-click luka.shd. Shade starts up and displays the Shade start up screen. Luka opens within Shade. Alternatively, go to menu File > Open… to locate and select luka.shd.

2: Using the Shade Camera with Luka

Luka loads using a default pose and camera position. To make changes to the camera position, locate the Camera panel. To change the camera angle, position your cursor in the center of the camera cross hairs and drag. If the Camera panel is not visible, go to menu View > Camera to enable it.

ou can operate the Shade Camera by dragging within the cross hairs.
A: Eye. Camera rotates around the character.
B: Target. Camera rotates your viewpoint.
C: Eye & Target. Camera moves up, down, right and left in space.
D: Zoom. Zoom in and zoom out.

3: Rendering

Rendering is the process of generating an image based on scene geometry and the effects of lighting. It sounds difficult but Shade handles all the calculations. To render a scene, select menu Render > Render All.

4: Switching Between Clothing and Hair Styles

Megurine Luka for Shade contains style sets that include both clothing and hair styles. Try switching between styles to see how it works.

In the browser, locate a Shade Part called Switch (Original).

Next, from the Aggregate View, click Info.

Below, you can see a Select control now. This lets you switch between styles. From Select, select the style.

Note that this uses the Shade Switch Joint, a powerful feature of Shade that lets you easily and rapidly switch between model versions. Read more about this feature in the Shade User Guide.

Luka's outfit and hair style change to the new style. Try rendering it.

5: Changing Poses

Megurine Luka for Shade includes several pose files. Next, try changing the default pose.
Select menu View > Motion… to display the Motion window.

1: From the browser, select Ball joint HIP.
This step is to select the portion of the model that will have the motion data applied to it.

2: Move the Sequence cursor from frame 0 to frame 10.
This is to avoid overwriting the default pose already associated with frame 0.

3: In the Motion window, click the Load button.
Select the Pose file that you want to apply.

The pose is changed. Try rendering Luka in the new pose.

6: Saving Rendered Images

While Shade automatically stores the last render associated with a file, this render is automatically discarded the next time you render your image. You should always manually save your render.

To save your work, from the Image Window, select Save > Save…

Refer to the Shade documentation for information about different file formats supported by Shade.

Creating Animation Based on the Example Animation File

1: Open Scene Data

Locate the scene.shd file and open it.
Notice that the scene.shd file does not contain a complete version of Megurine Luka. This reduces the processing overhead of rendering the scene.

2: Rendering Animation

Select menu Rendering > Create Animation…

Save As… window appears. Select the file format and name the file.

The Video Compressor dialog appears. Select any options as appropriate, and click OK. Note that different options will be active and available depending on the compression format you select.

Shade immediately begins rendering the frames of your animation.

3: Speed Up Rendering by Reducing Quality

Animation is the result of rendering individual images that are combined into a sequence. It may take long time to render all of it depending on the features of your computer.
You can interrupt the current animation rendering to make changes to settings. To interrupt the current render, from the Image Window click Stop. Now you can change render settings.

Large rendered image size can greatly increase the length of a render. The default Width is 1280 and height is 960. Change these to 320 and 240. That makes animation size smaller but rendering speed improves. If the new render progression is too small, you can zoom the render using the zoom buttons + or - .

Another way to increase the render speed is to change the rendering method to Ray Tracing (Draft). This increases speed with some sacrifice in image quality.