How to make a wireframe texture (Mental Ray only)

Here is a quick tutorial on how to make a wire frame texture for displaying your builds. Daryl Marples taught me this method, cheers prof.

Step 1
Make or load a mesh, the layout of the lines in the mesh will be mirrored in the texture so make sure your build is neat. If your mesh isn't visible turn on edge faces in the view port controls.

Step 2
Open the material editor and choose a new slot, press the "standard" button and select composite material.

You can either keep or discard the existing gray colour, i discarded it.

Step 3
Choose base material in the composite material settings box and choose a base colour, I chose a grey.

Step 4
In the first material slot first choose "standard" material from the box.

Step 5
Choose a contrast with your base colour for your diffuse channel, i chose black.
Remember to check the wire option available here.

Step 6
Apply the texture to your mesh. The mesh will look like a wire frame view (you can see through it)

Step 7
Change the renderer to Mental Ray and render.

You should have a nice basic wire frame texture with a solid background.


The pictures are uploaded in reverse, start at the bottom.