Rendering with mental ray and 3ds Max 6.4.4 Contourrendering Contour rendering is a method of rendering your scenes with any "cartoon" line work effect. You might be saying to yourself at this point that your company doesn't do cartoons, so you might just as well move on to the next topic. Not so fast. Contour rendering is also suitable for product presentations and hidden-line-removal- style images that are typically used in architectural fields. Contour rendering basically finds the edges of objects and identifies them with lines on a solid color or shaded background/foreground image. This nonphotorealistic presentation technique can also be useful in the early stages of scene development where more complex coloring and materials make it difficult for the client to focus on the basic objects. Let's start with the fundamental concepts of contour rendering and then try a few examples of increasingly complex options that will help you see the potential power of the technique for experimentation on your own. There are two components necessary to make contour rendering work: Material components Rendering components The scene you use throughout these exercises is a Dutch windmill in daylight with a sky background. The objects have very basic materials assigned to them, and your task will be to set up a nonphotorealistic presenta- tion for your client. 6.4.4.1 Exercise:Contourrenderercomponent 1. Open the file called Ch06_windmolen_01.max from the CD-ROM and save it to your hard drive with the name Ch06_windmolen_02.max. Render the Camera01 viewport, and you will see that the windmill has three basic colors assigned to its parts, and it uses mr Physical Sky as the background (see Figure 6.75). Figure 6.75 The objects in the scene have simple Arch & Design materials assigned to them. 188