Visualize interactively in Viewport 2.0 in Extension for Maya 2013

Viewport interaction

polygon tools
NURBS and NURBS curve tools
manipulators
Limitations:
- stippling (in the solid area of the manipulator that is being rendered inside an object)
cameras
- Camera Settings such as Film Gate, Field Chart, and Safe Action
- passive stereoscopic camera support
  - can be used in conjunction with depth of field and screen-space ambient occlusion
    NoteCurrently, depth of field is a 2d effect and therefore, you may see a flattened effect when it is used in combination with stereoscopic cameras.
  - Stereo > Swap Eyes support for all stereo modes. See Stereo > Swap Eyes for more information.
  - Stereo Display Controls options are supported
  - customizing the background color using the Stereo > Background Color and Stereo > Set Color Using Preferences options in the panel menus
  - multi-camera rig support
  Known limitations:
  - Do not map textures to the Zero Parallax Color attribute.
  - multi-sample anti-aliasing currently not supported for Center, Left and Right modes
- active stereoscopic camera support
soft select
- includes support for global falloff
mirror symmetry plane
interactive binding for skinning
lasso tool
Snap Together Tool
Snap Align Objects tool
measuring tools for distance, parameter values and arc-length (Create > Measure Tools)
Create > Bezier Curve Tool
locators
heads up display
render layers
Simple, Object Sorting, Weighted Average, and Depth Peeling transparency modes are supported. See Renderer > Viewport 2.0 for more information.
Playblast. See Animation and rigging below for more information.
xray mode
- joint xray draw mode is supported
- Limitation: active component
object based Isolate Select
component Isolate Select
pivots
local axis rendering
construction planes
bounding box partial support. Consolidate World (Renderer > Viewport 2.0 > ) must be disabled.
Env Textures viewport manipulators
crack free tessellated displacement for DX11/HLSL shaders
buttons available in the Panel toolbar that allows you to conveniently switch to the Viewport 2.0 renderer, as well as to toggle on and off on-screen effects (screen space ambient occlusion, motion blur, mutlisample anti-aliasing, and depth of field)

Viewport interaction limitations

polygon sorting
ViewCube
NoteIt is recommended that the ViewCube be disabled for Viewport 2.0. You can disable the ViewCube by selecting Window > Settings > Preferences > ViewCube and disabling Show the ViewCube.
file texture image sequences
custom HUD for plug-ins
user defined color preferences are not supported
false color on muscle systems not supported

Display overrides

filtering of items in the scene view using the Show panel menu
Templating support
shape node > Object Display > Drawing Overrides options: Reference and Template are supported

Shapes

Meshes:
- vertices: selection and pre-selection highlighting
- edges: selection and pre-selection highlighting
- support for simple geometry shapes: sphere, box and cone
- support for triangular faces (Display > Polygons > Face Triangles)
- triangle display mode renders dashed lines
- crease edges
- crease point feedback
- hard/soft edges
- faces
- invisible faces
- display of: tangents, binormals, normals, user normals, face normals
- display of Polygons > Component IDs
- multiple UV sets
- color set support
- false color on shaded, wireframe and vertex mode
- Smooth Mesh Preview
- skin weight drawing with Smooth Mesh Preview
- influence color and color set support on vertex points
- Display Alpha As Grey Scale (under Shape node > Mesh Controls) supported
  - Small alpha values may sometimes be difficult to see due to blending. Enable this option to display the alpha values as grey to avoid blending and to see the values directly.
- mirror cut
- unshared UVs
- Vertex Face mode (shrunken mode)
  - allows for selection of vertex/face pairs
  - includes support for smooth mesh cage
- There are three selection modes for CV's. Yellow indicates selected, red indicates active but not selectable and purple indicates selectable. In the default viewport, all CV's draw yellow when the object is selected. In Viewport 2.0, polygon CV's always draw as red in object mode since they are active but not selectable. In Control Vertex selection mode, CV's draw as purple as they are selectable. Viewport 2.0 more accurately reflects the selection state.
- no support for the following:
  - backface culling per polygon shape
NURBS:
- control vertices
  - support for symbols: box, U, and V
- edit points
- control points
- hulls
- patch centers
- surface origins
- surface UV's
- surface points
- curve on surface
- isoparms
- per Surface Patch shading, including per-patch shading for trim surfaces
- false color support for Soft Selection , Soft Modification and skin weights
- multiple curve points
- trim surfaces
  - false color supported on trimmed surfaces
- Trim Edge selection of surfaces
- UV projection
- bezier curves, including support for:
  - drawing of manipulators, CV's and hulls
- NURBS tessellation support provided by ARUBA technology
  This technology provides improved performance, especially for the support of trimmed surfaces.
- Level of detail is controlled by Display > NURBS > Rough, Display > NURBS > Medium and Display > NURBS > Fine smoothness levels. (This is equivalent to using the 1, 2, 3 keys.)
  NoteOther tessellation controls are no longer required and therefore not supported.
- There are three selection modes for CV's. Yellow indicates selected, red indicates active but not selectable and purple indicates selectable. In the default viewport, all CV's draw yellow when the object is selected. In Viewport 2.0, NURBS CV's always draw as red in object mode since they are active but not selectable. In Control Vertex selection mode, CV's draw as purple as they are selectable. Viewport 2.0 more accurately reflects the selection state.
Subdivision surfaces
- wireframe and shaded modes
- dashed lines
- control vertices
Limitations:
- The base polygon mode is currently not supported.
locators
joints and IK handles (see Animation and rigging below for more information)

Shaders and textures

wireframe, shaded, and default material shading modes
hotkeys for shaded/lighting modes as follows:
- 5 key for non-textured mode and default lighting
- 6 key for textured mode and default lighting
- 7 key for scene lighting, that can be combined with the use of the 5 and 6 key modes
adjusting material attributes in the Attribute Editor and interactively visualizing the results
bump mapping in all three modes: Bump, Tangent Space Normals and Object Space Normals
multiple CPV sets for surface shaders
- support for undefined color areas, where no color has been applied
- support for CPV modes such as Multiply, Add, Subtract
- support for different material channels
spherical and cubical environment mapping
NoteWhen using the envCube node with the default quality or high quality viewport, you must divide your cube texture data into individual sides of the cube. The envCube node has separate attributes for all of the faces of the cube: Right, Left, Top and so forth, which get combined into one cube map. Beginning Maya 2012, you can avoid doing this in Viewport 2.0. Connect your single file texture that includes all six sides of a cube to the Right attribute of the envCube node, and Maya loads the cube map texture properly as a single cube map.
texture placement
visualization of single channel connections. For example, if you have a triple attribute such as OutColor, and you connect one of the three channels, such as OutColorR, to another, you can visualize the update in Viewport 2.0
improved texture filtering
render nodes as follows:
Surface shaders
- Blinn
- CgFX shaders
- HLSL shaders with DirectX 11
  - UV Texture Editor displays textures assigned to HLSL/DX11 shaders
- Lambert
- Phong
- Phong E
- Layered Shader
- Ramp Shader
  - multiple ramp channels supported (for example, using Color, Transparency, Incandescence ramps simultaneously, and so forth)
  - multiple lights supported for Light Angle and Brightness Color Input modes and Specular Color channel
  - Limitations:
    - Normalized Brightness Color Input mode not supported for Color ramp
    - Forward Scatter not supported
    - mapped ramps not supported
- Surface Shader
- Approximated support for Anisotropic, Hair Tube Shader, Ocean Shader, and Shading Map shader, as well as for plug-in shaders with attribute names that match the Phong shader
- use of multiple surface shaders in the same shader graph (for example, a Blinn shader connected to the Color input of a Lambert shader)
2D Textures
- Checker texture
- File texture
- Mandelbrot texture
- non-layered PSD File textures
- - Bulge texture
  - Cloth texture
  - default color input supported for File texture
  - Fractal texture
  - Grid texture
  - Mountain texture
  - Noise texture
  - Ramp texture
  - Filter / Filter Offset attributes are supported for non-baked textures (including: Checker, Grid, Ramp, Fractal).
  - noiseUV support for place2dTexture node
- all other Maya 2D shading nodes are supported as baked textures. See Internal texture baking in Viewport 2.0 for more information.
3D Textures
- Snow texture
- all other 3D shading nodes, including Mandelbrot 3D, are supported as baked textures
Env Textures
- Env Cube
- Env Ball
Other Textures
- Layered texture
- Ptex textures, supported as baked textures. See Previewing Ptex textures for more information.
- - high dynamic range texture maps (exr, hdr, dds) supported
  - animated textures update in Viewport 2.0
- substance textures
approximated mental ray shader support:
- mia_material, mia_material_x and mia_material_x_passes (approximated as Blinn)
- misss_fast_shader, misss_fast_shader_x, misss_fast_shader_x_passes (approximated as Lambert)
- mi_metallic_paint, mi_metallic_paint_x, mi_metallic_paint_x_passes (approximated as Blinn)
- mi_car_paint_phen, mi_car_paint_phen_x, mi_car_paint_phen_x_passes (approximated as Blinn)
supported Utilities nodes:
- Blend Colors
- Gamma Correct
- Hsv To Rgb
- Luminance
- Multiply Divide
- Rgb To Hsv
- Reverse
- - 2d Placement
  - Add Double Linear node
  - Bump 2d
  - Bump 3d
  - Clamp node
  - Condition node
  - Contrast node
  - Mult Double Linear node
  - +/- Average node
  - Projection node
    NoteThe Projection node is supported as a baked node. Therefore, if you update your texture, you must click the Re-bake All Textures button under Renderer > Viewport 2.0 > to visualize your changes.
  - Remap Color node
  - Remap HSV node
  - Remap Value node
  - Set Range node
  - Single Switch /Double Switch /Triple Switch /Quad Switch nodes
  - Uv Chooser
  - Vector Product node
Note
In Viewport 2.0, if an object does not have a shader assigned, the object appears shaded in the scene view with a green color. This behavior is different from that of the default viewport, in which the object appears in the scene view as a wireframe. Viewport 2.0 thus alerts you of any missing shader problems.

If a shading network error occurs, the object appears shaded in the scene view with a red color.

Limitations:
- All other shaders not listed above are currently not supported, that is:
  - Add Matrix
  - Array Mapper
  - Blend Two Attr
  - Brownian
  - Choice
  - Cloud
  - Compose Matrix
  - Crater
  - Curve Info
  - Decompose Matrix
  - Displacement
  - Distance Between
  - Env Chrome
  - Env Fog
  - Env Sky
  - Env Sphere
  - Fluid Shape
  - Fluid Texture 2d
  - Fluid Texture 3d
  - Frame Cache
  - Granite
  - Inverse Matrix
  - Leather
  - Light Info
  - Light Fog
  - Marble
  - Movie
  - Ocean
  - Particle Cloud
  - Particle Sampler
  - Rock
  - Sampler Info
  - Solid Fractal
  - Stencil
  - Stucco
  - Surface Info
  - Surf. Luminance
  - Transpose Matrix
  - Use Background
  - Volume Noise
  - Vol Fog
  - Water
  - Non camera projection types
  - 3D procedural bump mapping
- Hardware Texturing overrides per shader are not supported.
- Conversion of HDR linear image to display color space is not supported.

Lighting

directional, spot, point, and ambient lights
For ambient lights, only a single non-directional ambient light is supported.
NoteAmbient lights in Viewport 2.0 do not respect the Ambient Shade attribute.
area light illumination
lighting modes: Use Default Lighting, Use All Lights, Use No Lights, Use Selected Lights and Two Sided Lighting
shadows are supported for directional and spot lights
Limitation
- point lights
Casts shadows and Receive shadows supported for geometry
approximated shadows are provided for area lights using a spotlight model
The default directional light used for Viewport 2.0 closely resembles the one used for the default viewport in terms of light angle. This default light angle is used for both rendering in the scene view and batch rendering.

mental ray

image based lighting visualization
photon map visualization and final gather map visualization
mental ray area lights, including visualization of mental ray area light shapes and shading of the area light. The mental ray > Area Light > Visible flag is supported.

API support

plug-in shapes
plug-in hardware shaders
plug-in locators
plug-in renderer

Viewport effects

screen-space ambient occlusion
motion blur
multisample anti-aliasing
gamma correction
depth of field

NoteYou can enable depth of field by selecting, from the panel menus, View > Camera Attribute Editor > Depth Of Field.

Tip To select a Focus Distance for Depth of Field, select Display > Heads up Display > Object Details, then select the object you wish to remain in focus. The Distance From Camera heads up display should indicate the distance of the object from the camera. Use this as your Focus Distance.

Pipeline caching

Using alembic caches via the Alembic plug-in is supported in both OpenGL and DirectX 11 mode. However, the gpuCache plug-in is only supported in OpenGL mode.

Performance

consolidate world
vertex animation cache. See Vertex Animation Cache for more information.
thread dependency graph evaluation
widespread improvements in tumble performance of large scenes and in animation performance with large or complicated scenes
improved heads up display performance (including manipulators and other UI elements)
improved tessellation performance with ARUBA technology
reduced texture loading time
NoteViewport 2.0 does not load file textures when in non-textured mode. Therefore, you may experience slowness when switching to textured mode from either wireframe or non-textured mode for the first time.
improved performance for several polygon modeling operations: combine, separate, extract and Boolean
matrix animation cache support for joints and HIK elements

Animation and rigging

lattice deformer
non-linear deformer feedback
soft modification
motion trails
- drawing of tangent beads and handles
- breakdown keys are displayed in a different color
constraints
joints
- visibility of bones in Viewport 2.0 is controlled by the parent joint and not the child joint
  If you hide a child joint, the parent bone is not hidden.
- support for bones and joints
- support for joint rendering and draw modes
- joint xray draw mode
  NoteX-ray joint mode does not work when any of Motion Blur, depth of field, or Screen-space Ambient Occlusion are enabled. See Renderer > Viewport 2.0 for more information.
- support for joint labels
- local rotation axis on transforms
Limitation
- joint selection in bounding box mode is not supported. The bounding box mode renders the joint wireframe; however, it is not selected when in this mode.
HumanIK
- IK Effectors and the different draw styles
- pinning labels and release pinning
- links between IK Effectors and aux rotate pivots
- support for HumanIK draw modes
- IK (handle) support
Joint ikSystem
- support for IK path rendering
- support for pole vectors
- IK/FK blending, including drawing of secondary joints
motion paths
- support for orientation and position markers
ghosting
- matrix based ghosting
- support for different types of ghosting; for example, Custom Frame Steps and Keyframes
- support for material (shading) and transparency
  Ghosts have the same shading as the object, with transparency. Opacity is an indication of how long an object remains in a position. Shading allows you to easily identify the object, as well as to view the overlap of ghosts.
- wireframe coloring support
  - Pre Frame Color and Post Frame Color are supported for Custom Frame Steps.
  - Keyframes use the color setting from Pre Frame Color for all ghosts.
- animation layer support
  - support for layer ghost button in animation layers (to toggle ghosting on and off in each layer)
  - support for customized ghost color in animation layers
  - support for muting (muting a layer hides layer ghosts)
- animation clip ghosting
Limitations
- Custom Key Steps
- ghosting of deforming geometry not supported
- fading of ghost color not supported. This feature is deprecated.
Playblast
- limited support for launching in batch mode
- support for offscreen Viewport 2.0 rendering
Limitations
- Onscreen Playblast is not supported for DirectX11
Image planes
- support for display modes (RBGA, RGB, Luminance, Outline)
- texture filtering
- imagePlane (transform) and imagePlaneShape nodes accessible from the Outliner
- image alpha blending and sorting
- movie support for free and fixed image planes
- creation of free image planes
  - Free image planes are not attached to a camera and allow you to select and transform it in the scene.
- selection support for free image planes
- pre-Maya 2013 scenes with fixed image planes are converted to free image planes with a constraint so that it is aligned to the camera
- depth and color depth image support
- image plane filter among the object type filters in the batch rendering options
- create an image plane and/or attach it to a specified camera using the imagePlane command
- camera sequencer plays animation with image planes
  However, searching for the imagePlane has changed, and you must add the –shapes flag so that the imagePlaneShape node appears in the list.
```
string $fps[] = `listConnections -shapes 1 ($shot + ".clip")`;
```
wire dropoff locators

Dynamics

The following dynamics features are supported:

dynamics manipulators support
- field manipulators
- fluid slice manipulators
- artisan sculpting brush manipulators
fields
nucleus marker
multi-directional arrows for volume emitter
paint effects supported when converted to polygons
fluid effects:
- drawing of fluids in shaded mode
- fluid container draw boundaries
  - bounding box draw
- performance improvements when playing back fluid effects in Viewport 2.0. These improvements are due to a reduction in memory use and 3D texture draw.
Particles
- point draw type supported in wireframe
- numeric particle render type (supports particleId)
Emitters
- draw and emit
NoteCurrent limitation: changing emitter types
nMesh

Limitations:

hair
fur
Particles > Particle Tool for particle placement

Rendering engine

You can run Viewport 2.0 using either the OpenGL or DirectX 11 rendering engine.

For more information on how to use DirectX 11, see Using DirectX 11 with Viewport 2.0.

For more information on the DirectX 11 shader and its auto-loaded MayaUberShader, see DirectX11 Shader.

Rendering

The Maya Hardware 2.0 renderer supports command line and batch rendering from Viewport 2.0. You can select the Maya Hardware 2.0 renderer using the following methods:

NoteIf you are using Maya Hardware 2.0 to render, your render output is clamped to a resolution of 4kx4k for the Windows and Linux platforms and to 2kx2k for the Mac OS X platform. If you have enabled the Multisample Anti-aliasing option, your render output may be clamped to a lower resolution.

See Maya Hardware 2.0 renderer for more information regarding the Hardware 2.0 renderer.

Enable subrendering to render UI elements in a separate render pass from the main scene. See Rendering variables for more information.