How to render a wireframe in Blender 2.9

A new easy technique on how to create a wireframe clay render in Blender 2.9. Since the wireframe node only creates a triangle-mesh and the wireframe modifier is very resource-intensive, this third solution will make the process of creating wireframe clay renders very easy.

Do you have any questions? Just let me know in the comments.

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[MatthewMerkovich]

Wow, what a find this morning when I stumbled across this three-year-old video! The only issue I am having with the bevel modifier approach is on the edges of planes. All the interior edges get the nice wireframe treatment, but the perimeter edges do not.

[fanatikbaru]

Thanks for the tutorial, it works for the wireframe but whatever I adjust the dilate/erode or the bevel couldn't make the line thicker. Is there any solution/another way of this? I'm using blender 3.0.1

[Katejsej]

Big thanks and big love! Great videos.

[reetu]

0:33 kept trying to shift control click the wireframe attribute doesnt do

[PrograError]

I would say this only works for certain geometry/ models and also if you are zoomed in like this; if you are zoomed out, you will need to adjust (3:20) your bevel modifier either making the "amount" larger (.005 and higher) or change the "width type" to percentage. And forget about the compositor part, it's ain't gonna help you much if ya so zoomed out that the line details are basically not visible or in pixels.

[RocketPunches]

It appears the Compositor steps for the bevel method in this only work in Cycles, as Eevee does not have a Material Index pass, or something in 2.92 changed that option (IDK I only use Cycles when absolutely necessary) in which case this should be the process for both renderers. In Eevee the compositor/render settings steps are as follows:

1) After setting up the materials, enable Material under the Cryptomatte section of Passes and set "Levels" to 4.
2) In the Compositor add a Cryptomatte node.
3) Plug the pins from your Render Layers node into the correspondingly labeled pins in the Cryptomatte node (Image, Crypto 00, Crypto 01).
4) Run your render once and pass the Cryptomatte node's Pick pin into the Composite node's Image pin
5) Use the "Add" color picker on the Cryptomatte node to color pick any of the wireframe edges in the compositor view.
6) Plug the Matte pin into the Composite node Image pin to make sure you got your lines.
7) Matte pin from Cryptomatte now takes the place of anywhere in this video that IndexMA is used.

[GSTPD]

Thank you for this Awesome Tutorial:-) Unfortunately, after watching it repeatedly, applying the steps carefully and repeatedly, it doesn't work for me:-?

I'm using Blender 2.92 on Windows 7.

[akunekochan]

Didn't know about the last one, thanks

[LarryMoore]

It's the only working wireframe render that I could apply without those ugly triangles and with a nice clean Maya like render! Btw, I couldn't reach the same effect on the last stage with thickness while using subdivision modifier. And sometimes the changes in the Compositing view are not instant, while presented in Render result. And thickness should be higher to see the difference in my case (0.05m for the default Susanne size). The more subdivision, the thinner the line (no matter how thick is bevel and Dilate/Erode node settting). Despite this it's the best tutorial on wireframe render in Blender.

[niemanickurwa]

Good clear tutorial man thanks.... but... This adds quite a lot of geometry to my model, I'm already running at 9 million verts in my scene, is there a way to do this without adding more geo?

[merinMeriyarin]

thanks for the tutorial!
i have one question though, the wireframe seem to be triangulate. can we change it to normal quad mesh?

[mirokumi]

Thanks for the tutorial! Very informative and it really helped me.

[Sogi]

This is a medioce method. The edge thickness is reliant on polygons being as square as possible. If you have a lower poly mesh and it has rectangles or other irregular shapes, the edges will be in varying thickness.

[justanothernobody]

All these techiques are awful hacks, they are either extremely slow or only work with certain geometry. It surprises me that Blender still doesn't have a reliable fast way of doing this considering it's a feature that nearly everyone will want at some point. Every technique either requires modifying your geo or UVs, the only way that works great is is Freestyle but it's extremely slow at rendering so only really useful for stills.