Render View toolbar

 
 
 

You can use the rendering buttons in the Status Line in Maya’s main window, or use the buttons in the Render View toolbar to perform various operations.

Some tools are renderer specific. For example, the IPR tools appear only for Maya software and mental ray rendering.

For more information on Render View, see Render View rendering.

Redo Previous Render

Renders the same view you rendered last. If you rendered a region the last time, Redo Previous Render renders the entire image.

-click this button to select a camera. All cameras, default and user-defined, are available.

Render Region

Renders only the region with a marquee. This is useful if you’ve made a change to part of the surface on which you want to perform a quick test render. See Render a region of your scene for details.

Snapshot

Opens a menu from which you can choose the view. A wireframe snapshot is taken of the view you select and loaded as a background into Render View. You can then marquee a region to render in front of the snapshot’s background and select the Render region icon.

-click this button to select a camera. All cameras, default and user-defined, are available.

Note

This option does not work when IPR rendering.

Redo Previous IPR Render

IPR renders the same view last IPR rendered.

-click this button to select a camera. All cameras, default and user-defined, are available.

Refresh the IPR Image

Completely updates the entire image based on all changes you have made. The refresh occurs a bit at a time—loading all the samples for the entire image may use large amounts of memory.

Open Render Settings Window
Display RGB Channels

Displays the image with RGB channels. This is the default display mode.

-click this button to select individual channels. Each channel has a corresponding icon:

Channel Icon

RGB Channels

 

Red

 

Green

 

Blue

 

Luminance

 
Display Alpha Channel

Displays the image’s alpha channel only. See Use Background and Matte Opacity for a few examples of how the alpha channel is used.

Display Real Size

Displays the image at its exact pixel resolution. See also Test render a low-res still or frame.

Keep Image

Keeps the current image so you can view it later. When you keep more than one image, a slider displays at the bottom of the window. Drag this slider to view a previously “kept” image.

You can also keep rendered images with any annotation you’ve added. -click the Keep Image button, and select the Keep Image with Comment option. When the Custom Comment dialog box appears, enter your text into the field, and click OK. Custom comments appear at the bottom of the image.

Note

The stored (“kept”) images are lost when you end your Maya session.

Remove Current Image / Remove All Images

Right-click the icon to select either the Remove Current Image or Remove All Images option.

These options can also be selected via the File > Remove Image from Render View and File > Remove All Images from Render View menus in the Render View window. See Render View menu bar for more information.

Remove Current Image

Releases the current image (and the memory it uses) from Render View. Select the image you want to remove using the slider at the bottom of the window.

Remove All Images

Releases all images (and the memory these images use) from Render View so that only the most recently rendered image remains.

If you are viewing one of the saved images in the Render View window, this option still removes all saved images, including the currently displayed image. Only the most recently rendered image is kept.

Tip

Only “kept” images can be removed. If you are viewing a newly rendered image in the Render View window that has not been kept, selecting this option will display an error message that the current image cannot be removed.

Renderer

Select a renderer from the drop-down list: Maya Software, Maya Hardware, Maya Hardware 2.0, Maya Vector, mental ray and any additional 3rd party renderers you have installed.

Lock/unlock render layer and render pass rendering

Toggle between rendering all upstream images used by the compositing graph or rendering only the 2d compositing graph.

/

Keep button unlocked to render all dependencies. For example, if your render target uses a render pass, the layer containing that pass is re-rendered. if the render target uses the result of other render targets, those render targets are re-rendered, along with their own dependencies.

When working with a compositing graph, lock button to render only the 2d compositing graph.

When making a change to the scene, unlock this button and render. If you have a render target selected in the Render View, the result of that render target is displayed after you render. After you have finished making your scene changes, lock this button to work with your compositing graph and render your render target without waiting for re-rendered passes.

ImportantIf you rename the nodes in your graph, for example, a render layer node, you must unlock this button before re-rendering your render target.
NoteThis button only appears if the renderer you have selected supports render targets (in other words, the mental ray renderer). If you have selected mental ray as your renderer but your scene has no render targets; or, you have selected Render Target > None in your Render View menu bar, this button exists but is disabled and greyed out .
NoteThis option is currently not supported for batch rendering and IPR.
Pause IPR Tuning

Pauses the updating of the selected IPR region in the Render View.

Close IPR File and Stop Tuning

Closes the current IPR file and ends the current IPR session.