The Outlining subgroup
3Delight for Maya can perform outlining on any desired variable. This can be useful, for example, when doing toon rendering or illustration. It is also possible to render shaded wireframes on polygon meshes; see Polygons Wireframe.
An example scene can be found at this location inside your 3Delight installation: $DELIGHT/example/maya/outlines.
Enable
This attribute enables outlining for this particular display. It is set to off by default.
Detected Variables
Specifies on what variables the outlining (edge detection) will run. Several variables can be specified, separated by a coma. For example, setting this attribute to ‘N,z,Oi’ will run outlining on normals, depth and object contours. By default, this attribute is set to ‘Ci’, which is the color of the light reflected by an object.
Threshold
Specifies the sensitivity of the outlining. The higher the threshold the more sensitive is the edge detection. For example, when detecting variations on ‘z’ (depth), a value of ‘0.1’ means that if there is a gap of ‘0.1’ between two surfaces (in the z direction) then an outline will be generated. This attribute is set to ‘0.1’ by default.
Color
Specifies the color of the generated outline. It is set to white by default.
Filter Width
Specifies the width of the generated outline. It is set to ‘0.2’ by default. Values between ‘0’ and ‘1’ are allowed, producing very fine outlines. In this case it is recommended to raise the Pixel Samples attribute (in the Quality group or rendering attributes) in order to avoid aliasing of the outlines. Next to this attribute, there is an option menu to determine how this width should be interpreted. The available options are:
Option | Description |
|---|---|
| Pixels | The filter width is a number of pixels. |
| % of Frame Width | The filter width is taken as a percentage of the image resolution in X. |
Depth Based Fadeout
Specifies the edge thickness fadeout with depth. It is off by default.
Min Z
Max Z
These two attributes specify the depth range on which the fadeout will be performed. By default, "Min Z" is set to ‘0.0’ and ‘Max Z’ is set to ‘1000.0’.
Min Filter Width
The depth based fadeout will keep outlines with a minimum width specified by this attribute. Its default value is ‘1.0’.