Rendering Outlines

Rendering outlines can be useful when creating blueprints or technical illustrations. This tutorial will teach you how to use Maya Vector to achieve this.

Set-up

You may need a model to work on. Use this model. Link;

First you have to make sure the Maya Vector is loaded. Maya Vector is a rendering software just like Mental Ray, but it specializes in effects like these. Also, this rendering plug-in can render scalable graphics.

Step one - Go to window>setting/preferences>plug-in manager. Roll down until you find the plug-in VectorRender.mll. Check Load and Auto Load. By checking Auto Load it'll load this plug-in every time you open Maya and you wont' have to check it again.

Step two - Open the render settings window (go to window>rendering editor>render settings.) and set the render using to Maya Vector.

Setting Up Maya Vector

Step one - In the render settings window you're to have to go to the Maya Vector tag. Then go to the fill options and uncheck fill objects. A warning should come up telling you that if you stick with these settings you won't see anything. This warning doesn't apply to use because we're only going to rendering the outline.

Step two - Roll down to the edge options. Check Include Edges. Set the edge weight preset to hairline.

Step three - Check edge detail. Set the Min Edge Angle to 20. This may vary on your model.

Setting up the camera

Step one - On the view port menu set go to view>select camera. Now roll down until you find the environment tag in the attributes editor (if the attributes editor isn't already open, go to window>attributes editor). Set the background color to white.

Now all you need to do is render.