Drawing Lines At Object Intersections

Imagine an object with a complex design such as a mechanical design from a science fiction world.
Did you ever try to use a texture to reproduce a design image drawn using many elaborate panel lines? You may be bothered by the fact that the texture of the panel lines becomes blurred or that the texture of the lines becomes non-uniform as the camera approaches the object.
This tutorial introduces how to draw lines that have the shape of objects as though they were created by stamps. To do so, we shall use Pencil+ 3 Lines' [Intersection] and Pencil+3 Material's [Draw hidden lines as visible lines]. Pencil+ 3 Lines, unlike textures, do not depend on the resolution, so we do not need to worry about the object's outline and texture changing.

  1. Create an object and apply simple Pencil+ 3 Line effects to it.
    In this example, we created a [Box] from the [Standard Primitives] and added simple Pencil+ 3 Lines to it.


  2. Create the objects that will be used to draw [Intersection] lines.
    Place these objects so that they go through the box.


  3. Set the color of the [Intersection] lines to red so that they are easy to see.
    Activate the [Specific Brush Settings] for [Intersection] and set [Color] in [Base Parameters] for the brush to red.


  4. Apply a transparent material to the intersecting objects.
    Create a material with [Opacity] set to 0 and [2-Sided] enabled and apply it to the objects created in Step 2.


  5. Render the scene.
    The lines obstructed by the intersecting objects are interrupted because they are treated as hidden lines.

  6. Apply a Pencil+ 3 Material to the transparent material and enable [Line Functions]/[Draw Hidden Lines as Visible Lines].


  7. Render the scene.
    The lines of the box and the lines where the objects intersect are drawn.
    Since the Pencil+ 3 [Intersection] lines are drawn based on the geometry, they can also be used in animations to produce beautiful results that do not flicker.

Pencil+ for 3ds Max Tutorials

Changing to the Scanline Renderer

Pencil+ 4 Line Renderer Instructions

Material Instructions

Nitrous Shader Instructions

Stroke Map Instructions

Reflection/Refraction Map Instructions

Line Instructions

File Output Instructions

Line Merge Helper Instructions

Select Edge Instructions

Normal Copy Instructions

Perspective Deform Instructions

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