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.
Draw Outlines in this Layer
This attribute enables drawing of outlines for the selected layer. This can be seen as an indicator of which layer receives the outline. It is set to off by default.
Generate Outlines Using this Layer
This attribute enables outline generation using the specified layer. Usually, depth and normal layers are used to generate outlines. When this toggle is enabled, a part of the UI becomes sensitive so to set the parameters of the outlines.
Outline parameters become sensitive for layers generating the outline.
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’.