Max scene used to generate the image from the second pdf in this tutorial.

Transcription

1 Tutorial covers creating vector drawings from a 3ds max scene and methods for compositing these drawings back into a rendering. Rendering set up is based of the lighting set up from the mental ray/skylight/mr omni tutorial. You ll need to download the free 30 day trial of illustrate! to go through the vector section. (Rhino make 2d is the rhino equivalent) Max scene used to generate the image from the second pdf in this tutorial. Its good practice to start diagramming within max or rhino. Generating arrows, text, and other diagrammatic information in 3d can be an extremely helpful supplement to standard 2d drawing techniques. Also, allows you to link or tie the diagrams to geometry which then update as your scene changes. Set up a basic camera view which will be the basis for your drawing. Ctrl+c sets the view. Shift+F shows you the renderable area which corresponds to the aspect ration that you are out putting. While this starts to set up a frame, there is no reason why you cannot extend the frame in photoshop or illustrator (going beyond the rendered viewport from max will allow lines to extend past this sometimes arbitrary boundary.)

2 Generate the lines to diagram the movement of users up the stair. Rather than draw multiple lines we are going to draw a surface that outlines the motion. Additionally, we will be able to easily control the paths of the lines through a single controller. Go into the create panel and draw a plane with 2 width segments. Add an edit poly modifier to the plane, hit 2 to access edge mode, and grab the edge as shown above. Position this at the top of the stair.

3 Create a few more subdivisions, so we can edit the base of the surface s shape. Shape the surface by moving the planes vertices or edges so that it flares out towards the base.

4 Switch to perspective mode and zoom about the box to make sure none of the verticies have gotten out of plane. Add a mesh smooth modifier from the modifier drop down list. This wil smooth out the points on the surface and create a curve instead of a hard angle where the plane begins to travel up the ramp Make sure nurms is the subdivision method and change the number of iterations to make the plane more or less smooth. You can go back down in the stack to continue editing the shape of the plane. (Be wary of using to many subdivision iterations as this can cause max to crash.)

5 Add another editable poly. This will allow you to edit the subdivisions that the mesh smooth modifier has created. Hit 4 to go into poly selction mode. Select and delete several faces. This will correspond to where a users path will stop and then sit down.

6 Hit 3 to toggle boundary mode. Select the bounding edges of the holes that were just created. With the edges selected shift drag downward in the z direction to create new faces. In the diagram this return will represent the sitting motion of the users.

7 Hit 2 to go into edge mode and select a middle edge which terminates at the holes that have been ceated. We are going to extract the edges that run along this portion of the surface. In edge mode hit loop to select the correct edges.

8 In edge mode and with the edges selected, hit the create shape settings button. Rename the new spline network, make sure shape type is linear, and hit ok. Hide the original surface as we will not be needing it. Select the spline that was created. Open up the rendering tab. Enable in renderer allows your splines to read as geometry with either a rectangular or circular cross section. Rectangular is fine. You can adjust the size of the cross section below. Interpolation will make the lines appear more smooth. The mesh modifier on the initial plane should have provided enough subdivisions that all the splines are already smooth.

9 Lines with enable in renderer and viewport options checked and a rectangular cross section. If you add an edit poly modifier on top of this you can begin to edit the geometry created here. You might want to do this if you wanted to further define our motion trails. Next we are going to make a basic arrow shape which is generated from a plane.

10 Sketch a plane and then add segments with the connect edges tool as shown above. Select the edge shown above and then shift drag in the x direction to create a new subdivision or base of the arrow.

11 In vertex selection mode ( 1 ) grab the innermost vertices and move them away from the base which will make the top of the arrow head. Use the scale transform to evenly squeeze the vertices together. Turn on 3d snaps and right click to make sure that snap to verticies is enabled. In vertex mode, move the verticies shown to the locations directed by the arrows. At this point the geometry might flicker or look weird. This is fine as we are just going to weld the vertices together which will fix this problem.

12 Select the verticies shown and then hit the weld setting box. Make sure the weld threshold is adjusted sufficiently. Before and after tells you how many verticies have been welded. Then hit ok. The geometry should be problem free at this point. You can continue to shif the points once you have the basic shape of your arrow head down. These can become a basic scene asset for you to use later on. You can then either extrude the faces from poly mode or just use a shell modifier to give the arrow thickness.

13 To create some text. Go into the Create panel, chose splines, and select text. A variety of fonts are available here. You can adjust font size and kerning as well. Additionally you can chose to add geometry here by checking enable in renderer and viewport. This will create text that looks like an outline. Text with outline appearance.

14 Position the text in the scene At this point we can do a render test. Hit F10 and change the output size to something small so we get a quick render returned.

15 Results of render test with a basic lighting and material set up. To create our drawing we are going to want to get rid of the ground plane. Dont delete, as we might want it to isolate our shadows with it (as shown in the matte shadow tutorial). Additionally, we will want to isolate our text and diagram lines so that we can render them out with the illustrate plug-in. However, since we want them to fit seemlessly into the rendering of the camera view above, we will want to do a rendering pass with the ground hidden, and a matte shadow material applied to all text, lines and arrows. Select the ground plane, right click and click hide selction. This will hide the object.

16 Next set up the matte shadow material for all geometry other than tkts. Open the material editor (m), chose an empty swatch, click standard, and browse for matte shadow material. The default settings of the matte shadow material should be fine as we really only want to create a mask for the text and paths.

17 Assign the material to your selection Do another render test. Make sure you are getting results similar to those above. Once you are change your output settings to something much larger so you do not wind up with a pixelated image. You should not have to rendering anything out larger than 1920px x 1080px. Save the large format image out as a png or another image that maintains alphas.

18 Now we are going to use the illustrate plug in to generate the vector drawing. Hit F10. In the common tab go to the assigned renderer tab, change mental ray to illustrate. Next, click the Illustrate! tab and then click the options roll out.

19 Click rendering wizard. This will lead you through some simple steps of setting up the renderer. Chose adobe illustrator as out put format. Click. Next. The next window will allow you to chose rendering type. Click use this style then click on the icon below so you can render with various options. Click outlines. And then click lines only.

20 Make sure single frame is checked. You dont have to specifiy output size here. Then click Browse to specify where your file is being saved. This is the location of the vector file. Click Next. Then click Finish when prompted. Make sure that you are in the exact same camera view to render from illustrate. You also need to render at the exact same aspect ratio. However, the size of the image may differ(1920 x 1080 is the same as 490 x 270). This is important as vector drawings do not lose resolution based on size. Therefor we can render them out at a smaller size (same aspect ratio) and reduce crashing from rendering at large formats.

21 Once your output size has been determined hit render. The image that pops up in max is the raster version of the file that has been just rendered. You can close this. Find the vector/ai file that has been outputted and open up in adobe illustrator. All your geometry will come in as the same stroke weight. You can change this from the illustrate! renderer in max but this can be far more time consuming then assigning line weights in post. Geometry should maintain layers which makes selection relatively easy. Adjust lineweights and colors.

22 Save the file as pdf compatable so you can open in photoshop or any other image editing software. Open up the first image (stair with everything else as matte shadow.) If you saved out of max as a png it should look like the above. We are going to composite the illustrate rendering into this image.

23 Once you have your illustrate! rendering adjusted, drop it into the surface/bitmap rendering file. If you rendered out at the exact same image size it will match exactly. If you rendered at a smaller version you will have to scale it appropriately. If this is the case make sure you are bringing the pdf in at a high enough resoultion. (when placing images from one photoshop file to another if you select a layer and then hit ctrl+d it will give you some image copy options. The drop down window allows you to chose the layers destination and functions like paste in place in in design.) Once the file is in place you can continue to change the look and feel of the image. (i quickly just did a black fill). Continue to comp elements into your scene by using the matteshadow material and or illustrate. Layer diagrams and text in programs that you feel most comfortable with.

24 The topics covered in this tutorial (both modeling and rendering) can be done in many different ways. It covers extracting lines from a surface, as this can be very helpful for producing laser cut files, or as digital construction lines for producing other geometry within the scene. Additionally, while we used the matte shadow material for compositing purposes, max will also allow you to save or isolate render element such as shadows, reflections, refractions, motion blur, etc for the exact same purpose If you are using rhino to model you can use the make 2d command to produce vectors and render your mattes from max. If you do not have illustrate I would suggest running through the same procedure in max and then bringing the geometry into rhino to use the make 2d command. Compositing from illustrator and photoshop will work the same. Isolating, layering, and compositing are important techniques for creating an efficient workflow that can produce images with lots of depth and complexity. Additionally, this procedure allows you to build in flexibility to your drawings in terms of turning layers on and off, rendering and replacing separate passes, and tweaking different visual effects.