Prepare to render scenes with Paint Effects

Before you render a scene with Paint Effects strokes, you must light the scene, add shadow effects, set up the camera you are rendering from, and select the properties for the rendered images. You might also want to set up your scene so that you can render Paint Effects strokes separately from other elements in the scene and later composite them together. For details on performing these tasks, see the sections below:

Light the scene

When light shines on an object, it illuminates the object’s surface. Without light, you could not see surfaces. The paint on a stroke behaves like a surface, and therefore requires light for you to see it.

You can use the lights in your scene to illuminate paint (real lights), or you can use a Paint Effects light that only affects the stroke paint and nothing else in the scene. If the stroke brushes use real lights (see Real Lights in the Illumination brush settings, part of Paint Effects Brush Settings), your scene must have a light to render the strokes. For information on adding lights to your scene, see Set up a direct light source.

By default, your scene is forced to use real lights in the Paint Effects Globals Options (see Force Real Lights in the Scene section of Paint Effects Globals Options).

Note: There is currently no way to link lights to strokes; all non-exclusive lights in the scene will illuminate the strokes if Real Lights is on. A workaround for this is to link all lights you do not want to shine on Paint Effects.

Add shadow effects

If you illuminate your strokes (see Illumination brush settings), you can create the following types of shadow effects for each brush:

These shadow effects do not depend on the lights in your scene. In fact, if the strokes do not use Real Lights, these shadow effects will still render.

If you use real lights in your scene, you can also make strokes cast shadows (depth map shadows) on objects.

To cast shadows on objects

  1. Select the stroke you want to cast shadows on objects.
  2. In the Attribute Editor, click the brush tab and expand Shadow Effects.
  3. Turn on Cast Shadows.
  4. Select the light you want to cast shadows.
  5. In the Attribute Editor for the light, expand Shadows and under Depth Map Shadow Attributes, and turn on Use Depth Map Shadows.
    Note: Strokes do not cast ray-traced shadows, only depth map shadows.

Set up the camera you are rendering from

To ensure that the strokes in your scene render well with fog and geometry, you must modify a couple of camera settings before you render.

To set up the camera

  1. Select the camera you are rendering from.
  2. In the Attribute Editor, expand Output Settings
  3. Turn on Depth, then set the Depth Type to Furthest Visible Depth. This prevents “fringing” around geometry.

    If you must set the Depth Type to Closest Visible Depth, and you are rendering with Physical fog, turn on Transparency Based Depth and make sure the Threshold is less than 1 (but not 0). (Threshold defines how transparent an object must be before it is ignored for the depth buffer.) If you do not do this, Paint Effects strokes will ignore their depth settings and render in front of all your geometry.

Set the properties of rendered images

During rendering, Maya generates a two-dimensional image, or series of images, from a specific view of a three-dimensional scene, and saves it as an image file. You can control the properties of rendered image files according to your post-production and presentation requirements.

To set the properties of rendered images

  1. Select Windows > Rendering Editors > Render Settings and define appropriate render settings.
    Note: Strokes are always anti-aliased, regardless of the Render Settings Anti-aliasing Quality setting.

Set up to render Paint Effects strokes

By default, Paint Effects strokes render with the rest of your scene.

You can define render settings to render Paint Effects strokes separately from other elements in the scene and later composite the scene and strokes together.

To set up to render Paint Effects strokes

  1. Select Windows > Rendering Editors > Render Settings and define appropriate render settings. For information about these settings, see Render Settings window.
  2. Expand Paint Effects Rendering Options and select the appropriate Paint Effects render options. For descriptions of these options, see Paint Effects Rendering Options.
Parent topic: Rendering scenes with Paint Effects strokes