A couple of days ago, my friend was asking about getting contours to render behind a transparent object, and I couldn't come up with a solution at the time since I don't do contours that much. After a couple days of research and messing around I've run into a jam. We wanted the contours around the poly faces of the objects which the maya built in contours do nicely and works with the layer_thinner shader, but don't show in reflection/refraction because the depth min and max aren't available without the custom contrast shader in the render globals. The custom Contrast and Store shaders with the Layer_thinner shader in the shading group works and shows the contours, but the only option that contours faces in the contour_contrast_function_levels is by index which outlines the triangles.

So what I need is either a depth setting for the built in contours to get contour layer_thinner to show in reflection/refraction, or an option in the custom_contrast_function, to outline poly faces without the triangulation. I've seen it addressed in other threads, but there wasn't a ready solution.

The only way to get the result we're looking for is to render with the custom contrast shader to get the contours behind the transparency, and also render each object with the built in poly face contour and a matte for each object and comp it together using the poly faces as a mask. bleh.

Thanks for any input.

James