Wireframe Modifier

The Wireframe modifier transforms a mesh into a wireframe by iterating over its faces, collecting all edges and turning those edges into four-sided polygons. Be aware of the fact that your mesh needs to have faces to be wireframed. You can define the thickness, the material and several other parameters of the generated wireframe dynamically via the given modifier options.

Options

../../../_images/modeling_modifiers_generate_wireframe_panel.png

The Wireframe modifier.

Thickness

The depth or size of the wireframes.

Offset

A value between (-1 to 1) to change whether the wireframes are generated inside or outside of the original mesh. Set to zero, Offset will center the wireframes around the original edges.

Boundary

Creates wireframes on mesh island boundaries.

Replace Original

If this option is enabled, the original mesh is replaced by the generated wireframe. If not, the wireframe is generated on top of it.

Thickness

  • Even

    Maintain thickness by adjusting for sharp corners. Sometimes improves quality but also increases computation time.

    Relative

    Determines the edge thickness by the length of the edge. Longer edges will be thicker.

Crease Edges

This option is intended for usage with the Subdivision modifier. Enable this option to crease edges on their junctions and prevent large curved intersections.

  • Crease Weight

    Define how much crease (0 to 1, nothing to full) the junctions should receive.

Material Offset

Uses the chosen material index as the material for the wireframe; this is applied as an offset from the first material.

Warning

Wireframe thickness is an approximation. While Even Thickness should yield good results in many cases, skinny faces can cause ugly spikes. In this case you can either reduce the extreme angles in the geometry or disable the Even Thickness option.

Vertex Group

The weights of the selected vertex group are multiplied onto the Thickness, so vertices with lower weights will be less thick. The vertices which are not part of the vertex group will be used as if their weight was zero.

Invert

Reverses the vertex group weights, so that the used weight is one minus the actual weight.

Factor

How much the vertex weights are taken into account.

  • On 0.0 , vertices with zero weight will have no thickness at all.

  • On 0.5 , vertices with zero weight will be half as thick as those with full weight.

  • On 1.0 , the weights are ignored and the Thickness value is used for every vertex.

Note

If the final thickness of a vertex is zero, it will still generate a wireframe. Therefore creating duplicate geometry, which sometimes needs extra care.

Examples

../../../_images/modeling_modifiers_generate_wireframe_result.jpg

Wireframes on a displaced plane.

In this example, the wireframes carry a second (dark) material while the displaced plane uses its original one.

../../../_images/modeling_modifiers_generate_wireframe_example-weights.png

Vertex group weighting.

The weights of the vertex group gradually change from 0 to 1.

../../../_images/modeling_modifiers_generate_wireframe_example-crease.png

Wireframe and Subdivision Surface modifier.

Cube with enabled Crease Edges option. The Crease Weight is set to 0, 0.5 and 1.