Rendering Curves in Maya
One thing I really like about 3DS max is the ability to render curves natively. In Maya there are a couple of different ways of doing this, but unfortunately none are as easy as the checkbox in Max.
Paint Effects Method
The method I prefer is to select your curve and from Maya’s rendering menu, select Paint Effects > Curve Utilities > Attach Brush to Curves
This will attach the default black Paint Effects brush to your curves. Make sure to share one brush so you can control the thickness of all these curves all at once: Paint Effects > Share One Brush
Curves rendered in V-Ray for Maya
There are a few problems with this method though.
mental ray cannot render Paint Effects at all, despite Maya Software, V-Ray and 3Delight being able to.
If you use this Paint Effects method and want to render with mental ray, you will have to convert the Paint Effects into mesh (which can get quite messy and heavy so for really complex scenes, but there are not to many alternatives).
There also may be a chance that some hard corners might bug out with this method. Although it is kind of rare, you can easily just bump up the Paint Effects resolution to fix it.
Alternative QuickTube Method
If you are using mental ray as your primary renderer, you could try running an old (but handy) mel script called xyQuickTube. It basically attaches nurbs cylinders to your curves.
While this is quite a heavy method, it works and it will render with mental ray.
Curves rendered as NURBS cylinders in mental ray
I’ve used this script on scenes containing DWG’s with thousands of curves in it so it is pretty dependable . Just make sure to get a coffee or something with those render translation times!
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Comments
Great, I never knew this, thanks.
