I’m trying to figure out if there’s a way to apply some materials to objects (or, single lines/curves, or a point) that will let us apply materials, e.g. an emission glow, so that it only applies lines, points, edges, etc. but not to faces, something like the example below?
(Would love to be able to do this with or without transparent faces, so that a “solid” object with glowing edges could be made.)
thanks
Hey! Wasn’t this different a minute ago? 
Yeah, I was wrong back then 
Lol… but…
Yeah!! I think this will do it. Not sure why I didn’t look in modifiers, I guess I just never noticed it. Thanks.
Oh - hang on -
Is there a way to get this to work on curves without converting them?
This is kind of an equivalent to wireframe modifier made with geometry nodes that you can use in curve objects as well as mesh ones. Here the curve has a bevel, so it’s already implicitly converted to mesh that’s why the geometry nodes set up starts with a mesh to curve.
The solution proposed so far has three major downsides:
Here’s what I’ve found to be the best way to show the wireframe:
This will give you the ability to add perfect wireframes with screen space line widths and occlusion.
Also note that with my method it is trivial to make it use dashed lines, as per the original inspiration image:
The best way to do dashed lines is, surprisingly, not by using the Grease Pencil dashed lines modifier, because the length of the dashes correspond to the line resolution. Instead, use a transparent image texture mapped to the material, like so:
This will keep the dashes consistent, even if the line resolution varies.
The reference doesn’t use occlusion:
This is for sure a good option, just something to note. It may not be the best option for replicating some of these examples
In general in 3D, triangles and voxels are the only things that are renderable, -they have either a surface or a volume that light rays can intersect with, whereas curves don’t have that, they’re infinitely thin. So in order to render lines, silhouettes, etc. you either make a mesh out of it or you use a post-process like Freestyle.
There is a way to disable occlusion also if you play around with the Occlusion Range properties. It’s pretty unintuitive though.
Forgot to mention you have to remember to set the Stroke Thickness to Screen Space if you want consistent line width.
Great tip! I’ve been trying to figure out how to do this for weeks 
