Wireframe Rendering in Maya Tutorial, part one

Posted on March 30, 2007

Rendering wireframes in Maya isn’t quite as simple as the “one click” 3D Studio Max method. You can, of course, resort to using a screen capture or the hardware render buffer. I’ve even tried using the “apply the UV Snapshot as your texture file” method.

However, I don’t think these can be quite “clean” enough for a portfolio that demands the best possible presentation.

So for all you fellow wireframe geeks and snobs, here’s the method I use to go about getting a crisp, flexible wireframe render.

Bring your object or objects into Maya and set up a camera.

TIP: If you will be rendering a turnaround or need something a bit more permanent I suggest creating a new camera and animating or locking it down. If you just need a quick shot, just create a camera bookmark in your perspective window. (Figure 01) This way you can easily come back to the exact same view and lens settings later.

Wireframe Rendering in Maya Tutorial, figure01

Select your camera (or viewport camera) and set its environment color attribute to 100% white. (Figure 02)

Wireframe Rendering in Maya Tutorial, figure02

Open your Render Globals window and choose to Render Using Maya Vector.

TIP: If Maya Vector isn’t able to be chosen, check to see that it is loaded by going to your plug-in manager. (Figure 03)

Wireframe Rendering in Maya Tutorial, figure03

Set your render settings to mimic the starting point I’ve layed out here. (Figure 04)

These are the default settings with “fill” turned off, and “include edges” turned on. What we are doing is telling the Maya Vector renderer to NOT fill the object with color, but instead draw a line wherever there is a hard edge. So lets get to making some hard edges for Maya to render!

Wireframe Rendering in Maya Tutorial, figure04

Select any object you want to be viewed as a wireframe in your final render and harden all their normals. (Figure 05)

I decided to NOT have a wire on the eyes, so they are not selected and their normals will remain soft. However, the eyes will still block any wire from coming through them in the render. You can put this technique to use for anything you wish.

Wireframe Rendering in Maya Tutorial, figure05

Render away!

You can do a single frame or a batch rendered turnaround or animation. You should end up with a black wire on a white background, similar to the middle image in the final render below. Composite your heart out. Take a grayscale (or anything) render from the same camera angle (nice! Its already bookmarked!) and bring that render and the wire into Photoshop. Lay the wire on top in Multiply mode and, Bam! you have a nice wireframe render.

Wireframe Rendering in Maya Tutorial, final low

But wait… you say you want to render a smoothed object? Then lets take this concept a bit further with Part Two. Click here to get to the good stuff now. (COMING SOON! CHECK BELOW FOR A PREVIEW)

TIPS:

What is especially nice about this method is that it allows you to tweak the final image in post. You can change the wire color (it’s already outputted with an alpha to make this easy =) you can change what is displayed under the wire, and you can adjust transparency. This works the same for putting together an image sequence in After Effects, Shake, or just about anything.

Sometimes it’s good to render your wires at double the image resolution and then scale it down to 50% in Photoshop. This can result in cleaner wires. When rendering larger, make sure to adjust the Vector Edge Weight in your Render Globals to a thicker width so that it’s not too thin after scaling down.

TUTORIAL 2 PREVIEW: ISOLINE RENDERS (COMING SOON!)