Rendering Wireframe

[Stuart Elith]

Not sure if this is exactly what you mean, but after you add your comp to the render queue, you can go to the Render Settings and at the top, select Wireframe in the Quality dropdown.

Other than that, I don’t think you can. The wireframe option in the comp viewer window is just about how you view the comp, I don’t think you cn render directly from that (though it looks very similar to the option I have described, I think).

You could try applying a Grid effect to all of your layers… wouldn’t look the same but you would be seeing a bunch of grids in 3D instead of the actual assets…?

[Walter Soyka]

[Keiichi Matsuda] “Is it possible to render out a wireframe version of a 3D comp? or even ‘save frame as’? “

Yes it is. Add your comp to the render queue. In the render queue, go into Render Settings and choose “Wireframe” for the Quality setting.

UPDATE: Stuart, you beat me to it!

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
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[Keiichi Matsuda]

Thanks for your quick replies.
When i select wireframe in the render settings, I end up with a blank white psd (i am ‘saving image as a file’ as i only require one frame). Im after a file with a black background showing all my 3D null objects etc. The idea of using a grid effect is nice, but not ideal as it wont show the null objects and will be quite time consuming as i have many layers in the project.
Is this white screen an anomaly? does it usually look as it does when viewed in wireframe preview?

[Walter Soyka]

That is unexpected. Do you have your comp’s background color set to white? Remember, a black solid will not create a black background in wireframe mode, so the comp background might need to be manually set to black.

You could also try setting your view to wireframe, 100% size, full resolution, and then Composition > Save as > Photoshop Layers. This will create a layered PSD of your viewport with the current settings.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Michael Szalapski]

If you just need a still image, how about just doing a screen grab? Print Screen button on a PC and then just go into Photoshop and paste it.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Bruce Wainer]

If you use a format with transparency, you may be looking at the transparent areas in a program that places white in the background (AFAIK, the composition’s background color is treated as 100% transparent when rendering to RGBA). I’d open your file in Photoshop and put a black-filled layer beneath it.

[Keiichi Matsuda]

Thanks for your suggestions everyone!

I was hoping that you were right with the transparency, but no banana. Not to worry, I ended up zooming up and taking a load of screen grabs, then patching them together and using colour selects/expand selections to thicken the lines up. Not the most efficient way, but needed to get it done.

Thanks again!