Wireframe mess

[cheeseburger]

Hi,
I am trying render out a decent wireframe using the Toon Ink lens shader. Trouble is if I use anything other than the standard sphere with 8 subdivisions in U and V I get diagonal lines where I shouldn't. Any ideas, suggestions ?

Thanks

[mc_axe]

Uncheck facet and put direction threshold to 0.5 degrees or something

[cheeseburger]

Hi mc_axe, I just tried what you suggested and I do get wires but they are with diagonal lines too, on all of them.

Any others recollections ? It look's like that was part of it or something. Any ideas on why the standard settings didn't work on differently subdivided spheres ?

[mc_axe]

Hey cheese, sorry no expert with toonshaders here but let me tell u about the diagonial lines,

On any quad or polygon there is hiden divisions underneath, evrything works on triangles.

So, this direction value needs to be tuned, actually where the degree is almost flat you will have problems
Anywhere in the geometry including the hardware triangulation. 0.05 works kinda ok for a 100 div sphere.
See atop my sphere is not perfect:


But either suceedd or not in a good "inked" fake-d wireframe, you wont be able to see the back faces

So the other solution if you want something fast is to force max AA and anisotropy(from the gpu settings)
And render with the hardware renderer or take a snapshot in whatever shading mode you like,
tune up the wireframe opacity from your viewoprt - shading mode - display properties, shade mode wireframe highlight.

[cheeseburger]

Hi,
I am trying your settings but seem to get a very different result.
Here's a pic

[mc_axe]

Hey Cheeseburger, you didnt changed anything in the advanced settings of the ink shader right? make new ink shader to be sure and apply only those two values. If still dosnt work then i cant see anything else obvius to help you.

For me as long as i can understand, it works as the documantation says. (angular based value appears the lines , and on distance based there is a zero cause you dont want mixed techniques)

2013 documentation:

Hidden content: [ Show ]

Thresholds

Contours detected according to surface properties at the ray intersection. These are not mutually exclusive (a contour may be both direction and also distance-related, for example), so setting one parameter to a value of 0 does not guarantee that all affected contours will disappear. Direction and distance contours are only detected within surfaces of the same object, with the same material applied.
Direction
Inks where the difference in surface orientation of sampled points not on the same triangle exceeds this angle. The angle is specified in degrees.
This threshold may be modified by the Depth-Fade Thresholds controls in the Advanced tab of this shader, and also by local controls in the Toon Host material shader.
Distance
Draws a contour where sampled points not on the same triangle exceed this distance from each other.
This threshold may be modified by the Depth-Fade Thresholds controls in the Advanced tab of this shader.

[cheeseburger]

Hi mc_axe, just can't seem to get the same results ... this is crazy. Are you freezing the sphere or adding some other attribute to it. Should I have changed anything in the render settings or camera ? You couldn't send me a saved preset or scene file could you ? I just don't know what else to look at. If I make a default sphere with 8 subdivisions it works. If I dial up 25 subs it renders these seemly random diagonal ones. I had a look at that great example in the docs, but changing those parameters didn't get rid of them....Gulp

[Hirazi Blue]

The one thing you could try, although it might seem awkward to set up initially is rray's wireD shader. You'll find it at rray.de, there is help file and a little tutorial included (and don't let the help file scare you into thinking that it's still for x32 only, it has been ported to x64 and this is included in the xsiaddon files).
;)

[cheeseburger]

Thanks Hirazi, kind of wanted to get the inhouse one working first but seems like it might be time to try that one you mentioned. Do you have any experience with it ? It's really frustrating that such a simple thing is so complicated. Thanks for the tip !

[Hirazi Blue]

The thing that sets wireD apart is the necessity to "throw" the custom MRGeoinformation operator on every geo you want affected. If you want all edges to be inked, make sure to uncheck "transfer hard edges only" in the MRGeoinformation PPG. I, obviously, can't guarantee this will work for you, but at this point it might be worth a shot...
;)

[cheeseburger]

Nice one, I'll give it a shot .... I'm a bit desperate at this point ... Thanks

[mc_axe]

Hey cheese i just figured out what i did you was right i forgot something,

I changed the setting in the geometry aproximation of my sphere (double click - local copy - yes) descontinuity value to zero ,
thats why is working on me. It is facet by default.

[cheeseburger]

oooH OOOOh ! I am gonna check right now ....

[cheeseburger]

Ok ...So that works .. but gives a faceted sphere so I'll just have to do 2 passes .... Better than the results from before.
Thanks !!! At last I can do wireframes from my favorite software


EDIT. Have just had time to sit down and try both methods and can now do Smoothed spheres with wireframe using the DL3D shader that Hirazi mentioned !
Thank you Guys, so much I was going nuts

[mc_axe]

Nice! and sorry for troubling you.

As a side note i noticed that the inked method works also on subdivided "+" "+" models as a quad polygonal Xray, str8 view on the HR wireframe model beneeth, from the render region,
cool stuff i`d say

[cheeseburger]

Nice one mc_axe ..