rendering wires in 3ds max

dansher

hey all

im trying to render out some wires of a model im working on (im doing it by using a composite material with a wire material in the second slot)

anyway when i render it out its rendering it with all the extra lines and stuff that you get from using mesh smooth, i have isoline display on so when i look at the model in the view port it looks fine but when i render it out its got heaps of lines everywhere

i was wondering if there was a way to have isoline display so it effects the render aswell?

this is what it comes out like


and this is from a screencap

i know i could just use screencaps but i would still like to find out if theres away to do it

thanks,
Dan

Mark Dygert

Create a new material set it to wire, change diffuse color to black (or whatever).
Clone the mesh, apply the material and a push modifier to bump it out just a hair and render.

There are other more complicated ways but that's the simplest I've found.

dansher

Vig wrote: »

Create a new material set it to wire, change diffuse color to black (or whatever).
Clone the mesh, apply the material and a push modifier to bump it out just a hair and render.

There are other more complicated ways but that's the simplest I've found.

that will stop it from rendering like in the first pic?

renderhjs

I always take just viewport screenshots, because after all thats where wireframes derivatives from and having that aliasing just goes with it.

There is some fancy stuff that you can do with selected edges converted to splines and then imported to Illustrator:


Just select some or all edges of your 3d model and click 'create shape' in the edit poly modifier. It will create a 3dsmax shape which can be exported as a illustrator vector file (top view X,Y)

dansher

yeah i dont really know why i dont do screen shots, guess i just got into the habit of rendering stuff

thanks

Tumerboy

I don't do screens of wireframe because I don't like all the backfacing cluttering everything up.

I'm actually kind of amazed that I haven't heard of a better way to do this than the "Dupe, wire, push" method Vig laid out.

In our engine, we just have a button we can push that cycles between full render, full render with wire overlay, and full wires. It seems like someone ought to be able to write a shader that would accomplish roughly that middle step without having to go through the trouble (and inaccuracy) of duping the mesh and pushing it out. Hell, I'm still in awe that Autodesk doesn't just INCLUDE such a feature.

renderhjs

imo. wireframes do only matter to those who know how to read them and work with them on a daily basis. There is no need to create a wireframe in most cases for fancy reasons, so you want to make sure that the wireframes don't stand out or distract other than just being a technical environment.
And thats why I just favor usually wireframe grabs from engines and viewports because they are the real deal, and not some bullshit fancy fake thing.

yiannisk

http://eat3d.com/free/rendering_presentation

nice and easy way.. takes longer for the tutorial than to actually do it, but definitely less than me typing it

cheers!

r_fletch_r

If you create a composite material with a a wire material added over a standard shader it works really well

edit: they do it in that link

SyncViewS

Hi, you can have a peek at Polycount wiki: http://wiki.polycount.com/Model%20Presentation
and at my essential wires mat library for Mental Ray: http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=69829

Simmo

Yeah, I was just about to post a link to those MR mats. They're bloody great!

yiannisk: Wow nice tut, thanks for posting

dansher

thanks all