How do I bake only hard edges onto a wireframe texture?

tajomaru

Hello. I need to bake a wireframe texture that only contains the hard edges of the model. I can't seem to get the UV snapshot tool in maya to only bake hard edges. Even if I isolate the hard edges in the uv editor when I do UV snapshot, It shows every edge of the model. I could print screen the uv editor, but that's very hacky and gives me bad results. Any idea will be appreciated.

kwyjibo

Couldn't you duplicate the model, select the hard edges, invert the selection, delete the edges, export the UV snap shot?

tajomaru

I need a wireframe texture not a render of a wireframe. Doing what you suggest messes the uvs because maya connects edges so they are not floating. 

Neox

can maya bake open borders in a different color? then you could just break the UVs temporarily to get that map

tajomaru

It can show and render borders in a different color, but unless there is a plugin, it can't bake that color to texture.

kodde

Can Maya Vector render to texture some how?
I know that it has features to draw lines on hard edges.

tajomaru

Unless you know of a plugin or a script, I could not find any option to bake the edges to texture.

Add3r

Get the hard edges, screen cap the texture window, manipulate the texture and use that as the base for the actual applied material.  Hacky, but it will get the job done.  If you are trying to mass produce textures for many objects, sounds like a tool request.  

tajomaru

That's what I have tried, but it's very low resolution and has no antialiasing. Wish UV snapshot could just take isolation into account.

kwyjibo

tajomaru said:

I need a wireframe texture not a render of a wireframe. Doing what you suggest messes the uvs because maya connects edges so they are not floating. 

As long as you're not deleting border edges, the UVs should be fine. If you have border edges that are soft simply exclude them from the selection when you delete the edges, then delete them manually from the snapshot in your image editor and composite with your texture. If this is a one off asset that isn't massively dense I don't really see why this is hard. Resolution shouldn't be a problem and UV snapshot in maya has a checkbox for antialiasing.

poopipe

I'm not that familiar with Maya's RTT stuff so forgive me if this is no help

I've done exactly this in Max using mental ray contours - the bit that caused me trouble was that it wouldn't save the contours to my output texture (I assume they're some sort of post effect) so I needed to capture the contents of the frame buffer and save that out instead.  Assuming you get a preview of the render it should be possible to save what you need out manually - I needed to script it due to  having hundreds of objects.