Blender 3d: Rendering Outlines Separately
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
If you have been using Blender 3d for a while, you may know the edge settings that can be used to create lines on your image. It can be found by Render -> Edge.
Here's a image I made with the toon looking lines. Notice the black outline of the objects.
BUT, what if you somehow want the lines to be rendered separately? Maybe you need it for some design blueprint, or other effects.
Now, I will teach you how to render the outlines ONLY!
For this tutorial, I will be using the model I've just shown you.
Firstly, make a copy of the original file. This is so that you can save the lines only file for future usage, and also to prevent any changes to the original file in case things goes wrong. As for me, my original file is called snow.blend.
Click anywhere on the 3D view and press Space. A menu should popup. Click on Add -> Mesh -> Plane.
Go to the materials settings. (You can press F5 for a shortcut) Click the tiny little button besides the "Add New", and select the first material from the list.
Adjust the alpha slider to 0.000. this will make the material Completely transparent. You need not adjust the other settings as the material won't be seen.
Once you have finished it, move on to the next material on the list and adjust the alpha slider to 0.000. Do this for all the materials on the list, till all are completely transparent.
Go to the World Buttons. (Press F8) We will have to make the entire background only one color. To do this, select white as the background color, (the one on the left).
Then go to "Map To" and make sure "Blend" and "Hori" are de-selected. Then, on the Preview pane, de-select Real, Blend and Paper.
Go to the render settings. (Press F10) Make sure the Edge button is selected. Then, adjust the edge settings to what you want. More Eint means lines will appear for more edges. Lesser Eint means that the lines will only appear on a few distinct edges. You can also edjust the color of the lines.
As for the format of the image, I would recommend PNG at 100% quality. You may want to erase the background of the lines render for something else later, and only PNG supports transparent backgrounds.
Press "Render" and wait for render to load. You can now save the render image by pressing F3 and saving the image in your folder.
So, what can one make with the separate outlines? Look at this simple effect I have made with a bit of Flash and Erasing of the background by Paint Shop Pro.
Possible Improvements and Suggestions:
- Use Blender like AutoCAD! Designers can actually use the outlines as orthographic drawings. To do this, select the camera in the 3D view click on the Orthographic button, then render.
-To render the thiner lines, you can render at an enlarged size, and resize it back down. For example, if you want to render a 800x600 outline picture, you might render at 1600x1200 and resize it by 50%.
- People proficient in flash can infact make the outlines "draw themselves out", like a drawing being drawn real time on paper. I have yet to try this, but I think it will be difficult but pretty cool!
Labels: Blender 3d, Graphic Tutorials
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