Image planes in 3ds max

The Umbrella Man

I have started using image planes in 3ds max because I have found the viewport background to be inaccurate sometimes. Problem is in order for the image planes to show up in ortho views, I have to turn off wireframe, which means the polys are solid and I can't see the details beneath. Is there a way to have the image plane show solid, and have everything else in the viewport show in wireframe only?

EDIT: I know how to make ojects see through, but that kinda sucks because I have to make each object invisible, so each time I add something I have to go through the proterties dialog, and it has that grey haze which still sort of obscures the view of what's beneath.

Ged

are you pressing f4 and showing the wireframes over the textures? Im not quite sure what you are asking for.

The Umbrella Man

I'm using image planes to display my concept art to model from. In order for the concept art to display in ortho vie I have to turn off wireframe display. Problem is when the polys show faces, it obscures the art beneath and makes it hard to see where I need to push vertices and so on. So I need to find a way to display the image planes in the view, and have the model still display in wireframe mode.

Asherr

try setting the material applied to the model to wireframe.

Mark Dygert

I work around this a little differently then most. I use The Onion Layer manager which lets you toggle on and off alternate textures for each layer. One material with the actual texture sometimes default grey, and another with a 25% opacity or wire. VERY handy for this type of thing. It's like making it see thru in the properties menu but with only one click instead of 3-4.

Edit: just read your second post, meh you're screwed =P Setting it as the viewport background is the best way to keep the image in wireframe mode. How is it inaccurate? If is stretching your image to match the view port hit alt-b and check on match bitmap.

The Umbrella Man

Even with match to bitmap it stretches it for some reason when I rotate the piece in photoshop. I'm gonna try the material wire frame and see if that helps. Thanks for the input fellas.

The Umbrella Man

Yeah it's an enourmous pain in the ass, If I come up with another way I'll let you guys know because the wireframe material looks like ass too, and it renders in wireframe as well so it's kinda useless.

low odor

would x-ray mode help ? select object...hit alt x...not a wire frame but it makes the selected model transparent

Psyk0

and dont forget to change the quality to best for x-ray mode(right click the viewport "name"),

Sometimes i create a transparency animated material (3 frames or whatever works) 100%, 50% and something like 5-10%, you can cycle through and have opacity change quickly, apply to all objects and voila.

HarlequiN

I set up a material that's at about 50% opacity (usually a colour somewhere in the blue spectrum for no particualr reason). I apply this to the mesh that's to become my model. The ortho images are in a material with full opacity and are applied to a box of the right scale with the faces flipped (so you see the back of it whan looking at the front). I freeze the box, and ensure that frozen objects are not set to grey (else you couldn't see your orthos - natch).

Then, I set the viewports to show transparency, except my perspective/user one, where I turn off transparency. Now I turn on shaded wireframe view.

Once this is done I can work on the mesh from any head on view (top, front etc) and see the orthos behind perfectly well, but in the perspective view (where I don't need to see the orthos through the model) I have a fully shaded model to work on.

Takes less time to set up than it sounds.

MoP

That's a pretty cool trick, Harl.

Mark Dygert

And thats why Harl makes the big money ladies and gents. I like that, I'm going to start using it. Good idea about using shaded views with a transparency, except for the perspective viewport. Just saved my maxstart.max file to be set up that way so now its even easier

Per, the background viewport is more stable in 9 and up, no more sliding around and scaling as you zoom. I remember those issue and it made it utterly useless to use. I think they fixed in in SP3 for 8 or it was 9 they finally got it right. I don't think that it was broken but set to non-user friendly defaults as there is a way to revert it back to the unstable method and there was a way to lock it down in the previous versions.

I use it because I have to composite models into a static background. You can also specify a movie file if you're doing work on films which is the only way to work on something that is on a moving background, as you scrub the anim bar it plays the movie frames. I don't really use it for building models, I use billboards like everyone else, I was just curious as to how it was broken since its been working fine for over a year, for me atleast.

pior

Haha I thought everybody was already doing it the way Harldescribed ?! Funny how techniques vary from one to the other.

rybeck

Just wanna share what I grabbed all together in mini 'how-to' setup Image plane box in 3ds max.

how to setup Image plane box

HarlequiN: Thanks for great tips~ I added your tips in it as well..~

Some parts maybe dug up too much, but I hope you all don't mind it since I was hoping this will be 'follwable' by even a beginner for either photoshop and max.
Also as I noted in the doc, please edit it as necessary, if you find any error.

Slipstream

[ QUOTE ]
Haha I thought everybody was already doing it the way Harldescribed ?! Funny how techniques vary from one to the other.

[/ QUOTE ]

@Harlequin: =O I never thought to do it that way. That's pretty amazing, thanks!

Ghostscape

I'll use the viewport background (which is still horribly broken in 9 btw) for a single ortho, but trying to get multiple orthos to match up is a pain.

I've set up Harle's method a few times but without the perspective viewport set to no transparency - sounds like that will fix my biggest issue with the orthobox method

Ruz

you can actually set it so that whatever object you select is in wireframe/edged faces.
this is in viewport config i think

TheMadArtist

What I tend to do with reference images on planes is set up a material and key it so it goes from 0% opacity to 100% over 100 frames and apply that to whatever I'm modeling. Then I can just grab the slider and quickly scrub back and forth to go to whatever opacity I want with edged faces turned on.