How To Render Wireframe In Maya

Read more: How to suck up a giant rooster A wireframe for your 3D model is a must when you want to present your work in a professional way by allowing your viewers to see the whole outcome. structure of the model as well as the topology. Including wireframe overlays for your 3D models is especially important when creating demo roll work, because employers don’t just want to see your 3D models, they want to see that you’ve noticed. to edge threading and topology, and if your work is possible Fortunately there are many different ways you can wireframe your 3D models in Maya so you can include them in an application. Use editing like Photoshop to combine different render lines to create the final look. This article will introduce you to the most common ways to display wireframes in Maya, as well as some of the benefits and results of each method so you can decide which method best suits your needs. mine.

Setting up Wireframes with Maya Vector

The first method to wireframe your model is to use the Vector Maya rendering option. This is probably the easiest method to set up and get results pretty quickly. Let’s walk through the process of setting this up for your models in Maya. The first thing you should do when creating any separate render pass like this is to create a new render layer specifically for this wireframe render pass. You can do this by selecting your entire model or just select what you want to be rendered as a wireframe and switch your layers panel to render and add a new render layer by select Create new layer and assign selected objects. You can name it anything you like, and you’ll want to make sure you have this new render layer selected when rendering the wireframe. Once you’ve created a new render layer, open the render settings window and in the Use Render drop-down select Vector Maya. Vector2 Now select the Maya Vector tab in the render settings window, this will allow you to adjust how you want your line to look. At the top of the Maya Vector rendering settings you will see the Fill Options tab. Go ahead and uncheck the Fill Object box. This will make it so that when you render it will just be the wireframe and not the underlying geometry. Vector3 Scroll to the bottom until you see Edge Options and check the Include Edges box. Vector4 With the Include Edges box checked, change the Edge Weight preset to 1.0 pt Vector5 Now you will need to convert the Edge style to Entire Mesh. If you keep it as an outline, it will only show the outline of your 3D model. Vector6 Finally, you’ll want to change the Edge color. You can change it to any color you like, as long as it’s not completely black because the default background color when rendering will be black so the wireframe won’t show. So in this case the edge color was changed to white. Vector7 When you render it, you will see a result similar to the image below. You can save this wireframe drawing as a PNG and bring it into your favorite photo editing app and overlay it on the render for the model. Vector8 After you put the wireframe render into a program like Photoshop, you can change the wireframe color to anything you like, here the color has been converted from white to black as it is brought into Photoshop. Now, the biggest downside of this approach is that there is a very dense wireframe, and that’s because Maya Vector triangles all the quads on your model. So even though this method is very easy and quick to set up, you may not get the exact results you want. Just keep that in mind if you’re going to use the Vector Maya method to create your wireframe rendering.

Setting up Wireframe with Toon Render

This next method is done using Toon Render. Although it is a bit more complicated than the first method, it produces more accurate results. So let’s take a look at how to wireframe your models using Toon Render. You’ll want to do the same thing you did for the first method, and that’s set up a separate render layer for your wireframe tag if you haven’t already. Toon1 Once you’ve done that, make sure you’re in the Display menu set by opening the drop-down menu set. Toon2 Now with your entire mesh selected, go to Toon > Assign Outline > Add New Toon Outline. Toon3 You should see a faint outline of the mesh, as shown in the image below. Now go into your properties editor and make sure you are under the pfcToonShape node. Toon4 Scroll down until you see the Folding Lines tab and dial the Reduce Crease Angle and Maximum Line Angle to zero values, and uncheck the Directions box. Your values should be the same as in the image and you should now see the wireframe covering the entire mesh. Toon5 For this, the Fold Line Width and Contour Width have both been raised to a value of 2 to make the wireframe a bit thicker. Toon6 Now you will need to select the actual geometry below the wireframe and go to Toon > Assign Fill Shader > Solid Color. You will see that now the underlying geometry is completely white, which is what you want. Toon7 In order for the wireframe to appear correctly you will need to change the background color of your camera, so select your camera to open up the properties for it. Toon8 Once in the camera properties scroll down until you find the Environment tab and open it up and change the background color to completely white. Toon9 The last thing you need to do is go into render settings and change Render with Maya Toon10 In the Maya Software tab, go to Quality > Production Quality. This will ensure that your wireframe is smooth. Toon11 When you put the wireframe render pass into an editing software like Photoshop, make sure you have the blend mode set to multiply. This will only show the wire and not the white fill that you have to add to the 3D mesh. You may find that using the Toon Render method produces a smoother and more accurate representation of the wireframe without the need to triangulate the quads on your model. The downside of this approach is that you’ll have to change the wireframe’s color in the pfcToonShape button’s properties, but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

Wireframe setup with ramp texture

This last method may seem a bit strange to you, but using a ramp shader is actually a pretty good way to set up wireframe rendering if you’re looking for an alternative to the two methods firstly. Let’s go through the process of setting up wireframe rendering using a ramp. Again, when setting up the wireframe render pipeline, make sure you select your geometry and create another render layer just like you did in the previous methods. Ramp1 Now select your entire 3D mesh and right click and go to Assign Favorites > Surface Shader. Ramp2 For the ramp wireframe to work, you need to merge your UVs. So make sure you’re under the Polygon menu set and open the UV texture editor. Ramp3 With your entire mesh, choose to go to Polygon > Merge in your UV Texture Editor. This will take the UV rays and attach them to the border points of the UV space from 0 to 1. Ramp4 Now navigate to the surfaceShader node in your properties editor and check the checkered box next to the Out Color property. Ramp5 Now plug a ramp texture into Outer Color. Ramp6 You can see from the image below the result you should have on your grid. Ramp7 This doesn’t really produce proper results for wireframe rendering, so you’ll need to switch the Style from V Ramp to Box Ramp. Ramp8 You will also need to change the Interpolation type to None. You may start to see that the result looks more and more like a proper wireframe. Ramp9 You only need two colors for the ramp to get a good match, so take the blue and get rid of it by selecting the X to the right of the color. Ramp10 Now you can get the green on the ramp and start raising it. As you do that, you’ll notice that the thickness of the wireframe starts to decrease, so you can adjust this as needed to make your wireframe look how you want it to. With your thickness setting you can change the red to white, and just like you did with the toon render method, you want to make sure the camera’s ambient color is set to white as well. Ramp12 In this case the wireframe will be set to black so set the green to black or whatever color you want. Ramp13 Before rendering you want to make sure that in Render Settings you are using Maya Software and you have the quality set to Production to get the best results. Ramp14 As you can tell, the biggest downside to this method is that you have to unify your UVs. So if you have any texture for your 3D model, UV layout will not work anymore. So if you’re going to use this ramp method, you’ll want to do it for something unwrapped UV-free, or for something like Ambient rendering. Now that you know several ways wireframe rendering can be generated in Maya, try these different methods out for your project and see which works best for your needs. If you have any questions or you want to share your own method that you prefer over these, post it in the comments section below! Want to try Digital Tutor training? Start learning new advertising skills from industry experts with a free demo account today!