Beautiful wireframe renders from Maya!

[Phr0stByte]

Just wanted to let you all in on a gem I found yesterday. It is a plugin bundle that has some very usefull items in it - my favorite is an easy setup for wireframe render within Mental ray - I swear its almos one-click easy. The plugin also has some other useful tidbits like a mesh object batch renamer and the ability to easily export scenes to other Maya versions. This freeware script can be downloaded here: http://cms.ticket01.com/index.php/freeware

Check out my first try at the wireframe function!

[CTZn]

Mmm we've got a mr addict here

I like the design of the cups and plates. Right-most object is not really interesting tho...

A cheap way to have wires in render is to normalize all faces and apply a procedural grid to them, with placement repeat set to U:1 and V:1. Doen't work with triangles but with some tweaks (like pluging a facing ratio into line width) it returns funny results..

[Phr0stByte]

CTZn
Thanks for commenting. The right most object is a sugar bowl and looks much better with the painted flower textures I have for it. I think for wire frame renders, mental ray is the ONLY viable option in light of the plugin and the fact that this render took 20 sec flat at 1280x1025 (posted shot is down-sampled a bit at 1024x768).

Also, the teacup design isnt mine. I followed this nice Maya modeling tutorial, as I am very much the Maya newbie, but getting more comportable with it quickly. The tutorial is here: http://www.cgonlinetutorials.com/tutori ... t-one.html

[CTZn]

I think for wire frame renders, mental ray is the ONLY viable option in light of the plugin

That's why I pointed out a plugin-free way

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showpost.ph ... stcount=18

[dougal2]

Another way to do it is use the Hardware Render Buffer in window->rendering editors.
In the attribure editor there's all sorts of options for output type and what/how to render - including wireframes etc. (use multi-pass for anti-aliasing)

[Phr0stByte]

Yep - I did extensive Googling before grabbing this plugin. The hardware render buffer does work, but the output is not very asthetically pleasing.

What the plugin does, can of course all be done manually, but I like to just create the material and assign it and adjust the render globals all in a couple clicks.

There is also a method of flattening UVs, but infinately for complicated than using the plugin. Not saying its for everyone - just wanted to share my find with other Maya users who might like it as much as I do.