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Brushes and strokes

Lesson 2: Painting in 3D using Paint Effects

Paint Effects on 3D objects

 

Learning Resources > Tutorials > Getting Started with Maya > Painting > Lesson 2: Painting in 3D using Paint Effects > 

Rendering Paint Effects strokes

The paint strokes display in wireframe mode when you paint in the scene view. Working in wireframe mode is very efficient in terms of interactive performance but you don’t see how the paint actually appears. To view the paint strokes in a rendered mode you can either:

• Render the scene view using the software renderer.
• Switch to painting in the scene painting view using the Paint Effects panel.

To render the paint strokes in the scene view

1. Dolly or tumble the scene so the view of the daisies appears roughly similar to the image below.

   

2. From the Status Line, click the Render Current Frame button.

   

   The Render View window opens, renders the image, and then displays it.

   

   The daisies may initially appear a bit dark in the image.

   The Maya renderer creates a temporary light with a default brightness level in order to render the image when no lights are present in the scene. This ensures that you don’t produce an image that is totally black; however it may not produce the correct illumination for your scene. If you want to obtain more control over the illumination of the daisies, you can create a light for the scene and adjust its brightness.

3. From the main menu, select Create > Lights > Directional Light.

   A directional light is created at the X,Y,Z origin of the scene.

   

   The Attribute Editor updates to display the attributes for the active directional light.

4. In the Attribute Editor, set the Intensity for the directional light to be 1.5.
5. From the Status Line, click the Render Current Frame button to render the scene again.

   The image renders and the Render View window image is refreshed.

   The daisies appear brighter in this version of the rendered image.

   

6. Close the Render View window.

Sometimes you may want to view your painted strokes as you paint. To do this, you can paint in the Paint Effects panel view and use the scene painting view mode.

To display rendered paint strokes as you paint

1. Press 8 to switch to the Paint Effects panel.
   NoteIf the 2D Paint Canvas appears instead (i.e.: panel appears white), select Paint > Paint Scene, from the panel menu.

   The Paint Effects panel menu and toolbar displays as well as the scene painting view. This panel allows you to paint in scene painting view mode.

   

   The scene painting view is a snapshot of the modeling view. In this view you can both paint and view your strokes in a rendered fashion to see what they will really look like as you work.

   You can dolly, track, and tumble in the scene painting view. You can select objects by pressing the Ctrl key and clicking on them. If you want to move, or otherwise manipulate 3D objects in the scene view, you must exit the Paint Effects panel by pressing the 8 key again.

2. With the Daisy Brush selected, paint a stroke in the scene painting view.

   The new stroke displays in rendered mode. If you dolly or track the scene painting view, any rendered strokes will revert back to wireframe display until you refresh the rendered display.

3. To automatically update the paint strokes so they display in rendered mode, select Stroke Refresh > Rendered.

   It will take a few moments for the rendering of all of the paint strokes to be calculated and then displayed.

   Each time you adjust the camera view while working in scene painting mode with Refresh > Rendered turned on, the system will automatically update the rendering based on the new view.

   Automatically refreshing the rendering can be time-consuming depending on the complexity of paint strokes in your scene. Alternatively, you can set the rendering to refresh only when you manually choose to do so.

4. From the Paint Effects panel menu, select Stroke Refresh > Off.

   Now you must manually refresh the Paint Effects rendered view using the Redraw Paint Effects view button in order to see the paint strokes rendered.

   

5. Dolly the view to obtain a closer view of the daisies.
6. Manually refresh the rendering of the daisies by clicking the Redraw Paint Effects view button.

   

7. Exit the scene painting view mode by pressing the 8 key.