Ink 'n Paint Material

The Ink 'n Paint material lets you create comics-style images without ever touching a pen or brush. This short lesson will show you a few of the options available with this versatile material.

All the files necessary for this tutorial are provided on the program disc in the \tutorials\materials_and_rendering directory. Before starting the tutorials, copy the \tutorials folder from the disc to your local program installation.

Set up the lesson:

1. Load the file tut_inkpaint_spitfire.max. This is located in the \tutorials\materials_and_rendering folder.
   This simple scene contains a World-War II airplane to which a standard material with a bitmap in the diffuse channel is applied.
2. Make sure the Perspective (lower-right) viewport is active, and then, from the Rendering menu, choose ActiveShade Floater.
   This opens a floating window that re-renders the scene whenever you change a parameter.
   Note that the background color is set to white; this makes it easier to see the ink effects.
3. Click a viewport, and then press M to open the Material Editor. If necessary, reposition the editor dialog or the ActiveShade window so you can see both at the same time.
   The first sample sphere shows the Standard material applied to the plane. You'll create an Ink 'n Paint material, and then apply it to the fighter plane.
4. In the Material Editor, click the second sample sphere to activate its slot, and then click the Standard button.
   The Material/Map Browser window opens.
5. In the browser list, double-click the Ink 'n Paint item.
   The browser closes, and the second slot now contains an Ink 'n Paint material.
6. Drag this material to the plane in the Perspective viewport or the ActiveShade window.
   After a brief pause, the ActiveShade window re-renders the plane with the Ink 'n Paint material, giving it a much flatter look. Instead of black shadow, the bottom portion of the plane's fuselage is now colored with a darker shade of the blue paint color. Reapply the original material, observe the differences, and then apply the Ink 'n Paint material again.
   With the default settings, the Ink 'n Paint look is a bit drab. You'll explore some of the alternatives, using first the paint controls and then the ink controls.

Modify the paint controls:

The Paint Controls rollout contains three basic settings: Lighted, Shaded, and Highlight. You'll look at each of these briefly, in turn.

1. The Lighted check box is on by default. Click it to turn it off.
   This removes all traces of paint from the object surface as rendered in the ActiveShade window, although the inked outlines remain. It doesn't affect the paint highlight, although that's not on right now so you cannot see it anyway.
2. Turn Lighted back on, and then, over on the right side of the rollout, click the upper half of the Paint Levels spinner once to set it to 3.
   The plane now shows three levels of shading, with a new level between the two original levels.
   By default, the Ink 'n Paint material uses two levels of shading to match the shading often found in color comics. However, you can increase this up to 255 for a more three-dimensional look, or to as low as 1 for a completely flat look.
3. Try increasing the number of levels a few more times, and then set it back to 3.
   As you increase the number of levels, the area of pure paint color becomes smaller, while the darkest shaded area remains the same size.
   Tip: To increase the size of the fully lit area, make the light source brighter by increasing its Multiplier setting. With this material, the light color has no effect, and changing the lighting intensity affects only the size ratio between lit and shaded areas.
   Next, you'll look at the Shaded setting.
4. Currently, Shaded is turned on, and is set to 70. Change this to 35, and then 0.
   
   

   Left: Shaded=35; Right: Shaded=0
   As you lower the Shaded value, the shaded areas of the surface get progressively darker, but the lit portion does not. Among other things, this lets you change the apparent lighting setup without touching the light source(s).
5. Turn off Shaded.
   The spinner changes to a color swatch, currently showing a dark blue-green color. The shaded areas now blend between the Lighted color and the Shaded color.
6. Click the color swatch and change the Shaded color to a markedly different one; say, a dark red.
   After a brief pause, the ActiveShade window displays the change.
7. Try a few other colors, and also try increasing the Paint Levels setting for a smoother transition.
   Next, you'll look at the Highlight setting.
8. Turn on Highlight.
   Bright, hard-edged highlights appear in the same places as the specular highlights in the original material.
9. Set the Glossiness value to 20.
   This works just like the Glossiness setting in the Blinn shader: Reducing it enlarges the highlight, while increasing it makes the highlight smaller.

Modify the ink controls:

1. Create a new Ink 'n Paint material and apply it to the plane.
   This lets you start over so you can isolate the ink settings.
2. Close the Paint Controls rollout so the Ink Controls rollout is completely visible.
3. First, turn off Ink.
   Now only the painted surface is visible. As you can see, the ink effect is very important for the comics look. In most cases, you'll want to keep Ink turned on when using this material.
4. Turn Ink back on, and then turn on Variable Width.
   A slight difference is visible. You'll increase the maximum width to make it more apparent.
5. Set Max to 10.
   Now it's easier to see that the ink is thinnest where the light intensity is high, and thickest in the most deeply shaded areas. This replicates the look of drawn comics, where the artists ink the outlines of shadowed areas the thickest.
   To conclude this lesson, you'll look at some of the available ink types.
6. Move down to the Outline setting, and turn off its check box.
   The outline vanishes, but the inner line of ink remains. The software creates outline ink only where the object's edges meet the background.
7. Turn Outline back on, and turn off SmGroup.
   Now the lines acting like borders between faces assigned to different smoothing groups disappear.
8. Turn off Overlap.
   Now the inner line of ink is gone. Overlap ink is generated on the near surfaces when parts of an object's geometry overlap other parts.
9. Turn Overlap back on, and then turn on Underlap.
   The inner line of ink appears to have thickened. Try toggling Underlap a few times. If you look closely, you'll see the thickness is added above the Overlap line. That's because Underlap ink is generated on the far surfaces adjacent to overlapping geometry (from the current viewpoint). Try turning off Overlap to see the difference.

Working with Maps

Lastly, you'll look at how you can use a map to give the rendering the look of a pencil/charcoal drawing.

1. Create a new Ink 'n Paint material and apply it to the plane.
2. Click the blue Lighted color swatch and set it to white.
3. Set the Paint Levels to 5.
4. Turn off Shaded in the Paint Controls rollout.
5. Click the map button in the Shaded channel (currently reads “None”), and then, in the Material/Map Browser, double-click Noise.
6. On the Coordinates rollout, set the X tiling to 25, the Y-Angle to -45 and the Z-Angle to 45.
7. On the Noise Parameters rollout, set Noise Type=Fractal, Size to 100, High threshold to 0.6 and Low threshold to 0.4.
   The paint now has a pencil stroke pattern applied to the shaded areas.
   The effect can be strengthened by playing with the light sources in the scene.
8. Go to the Display panel and turn off Lights in the Hide by Category rollout.
9. Zoom out in the Front view and select the omni light above the plane.
10. Go to the Modify panel. In the Intensity/Color/Attenuation rollout, set the Multiplier value to 0.75.

Summary

You've scratched the surface of the Ink 'n Paint material with this lesson, but there's much more to it than described here. For instance, you can use any 3ds Max map to specify almost any material component, and you can set each map's intensity to any percent between 0 and 100. You can use ink to outline smoothing groups as seen on the fighter plane in this exercise, but also on areas with different material IDs, and set different colors for each ink type. All of these settings let you achieve a wide range of effects with Ink 'n Paint.