Im trying to output simple hidden line renders of a model with vray toon.
Im getting artifacts etc because of coplanars. I need to do this in next 30 mins or so, and am stuck. Cant believe theres not a simple ‘hidden line render’ option in MAX.
for hidden line you can also use the vrayedges texmap…should be able to do the trick…to get rid of coplanar artifacts raise the secondary ray bias a tad…a REALLY SMALL tad…like 0.002 or something like that should do the trick
Thorsten
You could also try the ink & paint material with scanline. But again, coplanar faces are going to give you a problem.
thanks for help but im just looking for the simplest option really - almost just outputting viewport would be better. Is there really no simple wayof creating a simple ‘hidden line’ image?..anyone?
Can you import into AutoCAD? - then HLSETTINGS and set you hidden line type etc - set display mode to hidden or type HIDE… should work fine.
Good luck
im sorry but this starting to really F*** me OFF!!
Ive simply been asked to produce some simple hidden line previews of a model.
I have turned off all lights, applied a white 100%self illum mat and turned on Vray Toon. Im still getting broken lines etc… WHY?
Why cant it just NOT break the lines?
My client is asking WHY broken lines?
I am asking Why broken lines with over £2000 worth of software … ??
unacceptable.
(CAD not installed at the mo)
If you need it only as a preview why dont you output the viewport then ?
Together with motionblur or any other multipass camera effect it should do the trick…viewport preview…
as of broken lines that most likely due to wring sampling settings and or scale issues…vraytoon is a bit beta in the current builds
Thorsten
thanks for help…as always.
Of course too much to expect max to have hidden line feature!?
Just all faces or none.
ARRGHHH!
--just spent 2 hrs trying to create clean hidden line render. Found that dropping res gets rid of (some) broken lines with VRAYTOON>
Come on - this is the most simple, most useful, and most expected viewing style for architects, and designers. HIDDEN LINE - Think about preview power of software like lightscape, and more recently sketchup and you’ll see how embarrasingly deficient our setups are with this.
It is not really the forum to say this but…
For this kind of work, we are using FinalRender, the lines process combined with scanline takes about 5 sec an image, it is crisp, and you can control the width with Illustrator/CorelDraw as the output is vector.
We do illustrative work books, with grayscale Vray renders, with FinalRender lines over, looks great.
oh that simple. play with your AA settings. thats whats wrong with your lines. thats my best guess
Hey Thablanch - sounds good, any chance of seeing some of your images 
There is also a rendering engine for Max called “Illustrate!” that can output some very impressive hiddenline-type images.
Calm down for a second and stop ranting about hiddenline not being in Max/Vray by default. You have a valid point of it not being in Viz by default, but Max is not targetting ArchViz as its primary market liked 3DSViz, FormZ, or AutoCAD are.
Even FormZ frequently has problems with hiddenline renderings. Usually, problems with hiddenline renderings are a result of bad geometry, coplanar surfaces, or anti-aliasing settings. Normally, it isn’t too much of an issue. But if on a particular image, there is a big artifact when hiddenline rendering (like the one you showed) it is generally very simple to quickly cleanup in Photoshop.
IMHO final toon is better and faster than illustrate.
Although it is not a plugin for Max, it is a seperate program, SketchUp is able to produce this look, and render out animations of it.
480 minute demo available on their website as well. I start ‘every’ project with SU, no exceptions.
I’ve been asking for hidden line since 3D Studio R4 for DOS. I know your frustration, and I wouldn’t expect it to ever be available.
You could render out a simple image, no GI of reflections, no maps but bold colours are good.
in Photoshop desaturate the image, copy the layer, and use find edges filter, under > stylise I think.
It’s a bit crude but can have a nice look. Also try making the layer semi transparent, can work nicely.
I do hidden line outputs all the time, either for a quick study or as a pass for comping with GI-renders. I find Vray Toon to work fine for this. A quick setup for outputting a toon pass from a scene thats set up for something else is to override the materials with a completely black one, turn VrayToon to white, about 1 px width, and render with all lights off and no GI, with catmull-rom AA. Adding a Falloff to the width of VrayToon can be very useful if you work with large scenes.
Another option, that is way faster and better than Illustrate is the Swift3D plugin. Outputting the hidden lines as vectors gives you a lot more options in post than VrayToon ever will, of course(working with brushes in illustrator, for instance, or editing the lines).
Bad geometry, on the other hand, will always be bad geometry, no matter which renderer you use… 
the broken lines do look like a classic example or an AA problem
Have a look at the normals … thats normaly the cause .. and calm down a little, i find thats its usually user error.
took awhile for me to find the post i was looking for, but here have a look at this thread and see if it helps.
http://www.chaosgroup.com/forum/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=12806&highlight=toon
Robur, not my standard images, but similar workflow
Really nice and clean output