Its in the camera parameters menu. First select your camera in the camera menu, then in Camera Parameters where it says 3D, click on it, and it will give you option to change to other ortho views.

That will be $100 bucks. Just paypal it to me. :)

maxwell doesn't render ortho cameras.

your best bet is to create a perspective view and use 35-55mm lens and tweak the film back to get your entire scene in view. make sure that the camera and the camera target are "level", the shift function may also help. . .

check the naxwell forums for more info--this actually came up this week

From the manual:
http://www.maxwellrender.com/pdf/what's_new_in1.7_guide.pdf

"3D/ Ortho View Dropdown: You can switch a camera to be a perspective (3D) camera or an orthographic camera (2D). This is
useful if you wish to render an orthographic view while still having access to common camera parameters such as resolution and
ISO. Please note that focal length is not available when the camera is in orthographic mode."

thanks everyone!

this was the suggestion of Jeremy (JDHill), the guy that writes the Rhino plugin (amongst others) in January of this year (after saying that the Maxwell camera does not support Parallel projections):

"…but what I'd do is this (in Rhino):

- open Object Properties
- click in the desired viewport (Top, for example)
- set Projection to Perspective
- set Lens Length to something like 1000mm, like Kami said
- set Target X/Y/Z to 0.0
- set Camera X/Y to 0.0"

studio does appear to be able to render "front", "back", "left", etc. but it still seems a little off…so if you're working directly from the plugin, you'll need to do what is outlined above; however, if you plan on working from Studio, try the "F,B,L,R,T, or D" buttons.

the other things you should check if you still get black renders are:
--scene scale: are you working in "real size"??? the plugin automatically handles any internal scaling that needs to occur for MXCL (Maxwell works in metric)
--emitter normals: are the normals of your emitters pointing in the correct direction?
--is the camera inside any geometry?
--if you're at "real scale" are your emitters set appropriately (real illumination values)?

or just use vray

Dear Antisthenes,
I might be stealing the topic here...
In 3ds Max Vray, there is an option called 'final toon' that renders contours of objects overlayed on vray rendering..
Is there a similar feature in Vray plugin for Rhino??
I am asking you since I've learned so much about Rhino and Grasshopper from your threads. Thanks!

yes, i have found no difference in the vray builds for different platforms

what i like to do is also use Penguin because you can get a vector output of the toon sketch in many styles. and overlay that.

also Brazil has toon render options

aha.. penguin works great for me....
thanx

there is also the technical display plug-in and of course you can run Penguin display modes Live
Link

and the 'TestSetAAlevel' command and '-ViewportCaptureToFile'
very useful

Anti,
How can you get a vector output from Penquin? It doesn’t offer dwg or ai options when saving.

Penguin

shit, I don’t have these options in Penguin.v1.0.SR3 unfortunately and I don’t have the key for 2.0

just load the demo?

demo will draw the ugly lines everywhere)
or you mean I can get rid of them in Illustrator??

or you could get it for 150 here:
link/products/1062

or 77 for Edu that mcneel lets you take to work with you for full commercial use.

Thank you Anti, but this contradicts my convictions.

btw thanx for the TestSetAAlevel command, didn't know about that

TestMaxSpeed

what conviction is that? to never be a student again or not to use the liberatory licensing policies offered by mcneel and associates?

buahaha that's really useful


To never pay for anything you can get for free.
I agree it's really inexpensive in comparison with other products though.

Okay in that case, does anyone have any info on how to render an ortho view in Maya with Mental Ray or any other plugin? I guess if I Have Maxwell for Maya, the settings mentioned above for Rhino might work since the setting tools are more or less exact. we tried to figure it out in Vienna, but all we could manage to do was adjust camera focal lengths and try to rotate it appropriately...but you still get a slight distorted perspective. I think it can be done easily in Max with Mental Ray, but I am clueless with Maya.

Any help would be much appreciated.

sorry, but I don't have Maya on this machine (will double-check tonight if I remember): don't you just select the camera/view and render? choosing it from the pull-down…make sure the camera has it's "renderable" flag turned on in its attributes

it shouldn't matter which renderer you have selected, the camera controls are the same (maxwell and MR just add some extra nodes) and you should be able to use the same camera in the different engines (hardware, software, MR, MXCL…)

OK

I was bored and downloaded the Maya 2009 30-day trial and was able to get an ortho "top" view render using mental ray. It appears to be actually orthographic without doing anything else to the camera--if you're still having troubles I could do some further testing this evening with 7.0.1

make sure that whatever camera you plan on using is in the "renderable cameras" list in the "common" tab of the render settings window…

I'm having the same problems as the OP but with Vray on Rhino.. when I try to render the top viewport with the "standard" camera instead of "physical" (so that I get an orthographic view), the image whites out completely. this doesn't happen with vray in Max.. what should I look out for in the settings, particularly?

I don't use VRAY, but…

is your camera accidentally within some geometry or too close to something?

Are the exposure settings messing up the render? Was it originally a "physical" camera that you changed to "standard"?

can you render another orthographic view (right, left, etc.)?

yes

nope, the camera isn't close to anything and not a camera per se as just the activated viewport. I switched the vray settings from physical camera to "standard" - and there don't seem to be any exposure controls there. the behaviour vray is giving me is erratic - I could output stuff with a friend's settings - he turned the "sky" feature in the GI sub settings to "none" - alternatively I can set the primary GI to a multiplier of .0001 or so and stuff shows up on the first pass, only to be effaced by the second. then after a while, the settings seem to "flip" and previous renderings disappear again. any thoughts? thanks for your time & ideas! perhaps I'm just spoiled by ortho renderings working fine from the start in 3ds max with MR / vray.

i've done it call tech support at asgvis i'm sure they can help you

try flamingo 2/nXt