After you have set up the Hardware Render Buffer, you may want to preview particles. The following procedure describes a typical method for previewing particles; you may decide to use a slightly different procedure.

To preview hardware particles

1. If the Hardware Render Buffer is not already open, select Window > Rendering Editors > Hardware Render Buffer to open it.
2. If the Hardware Render Globals Attribute Editor is not already open, select Render > Attributes to open it.
3. Set Lighting Mode to either Default Light (a directional light), All Lights (up to eight lights in your scene), or Selected Lights (the lights in your scene that you’ve selected).
4. If you want to preview particles and surfaces, set Draw Style according to how you want surfaces to appear (Points, Wireframe, Flat Shaded, or Smooth Shaded).
5. If Draw Style is Wireframe, or if you are rendering particles that have a Particle Render Type of Streak or MultiStreak, turn on Line Smoothing.
6. Turn off Full Image Resolution.
7. Do one of the following:
   • To preview particles only, turn on Geometry Mask.
   • To preview particles and surfaces, turn off Geometry Mask.
8. If you want to preview particles and surfaces, and you want surfaces to be anti-aliased (that is, to have soft edges instead of sharp, jagged edges), turn on Multi Pass Rendering and Anti Alias Polygons.
9. If you are rendering particles that have a Particle Render Type of MultiStreak or MultiPoint, and you want the particles to be softened or blurred, turn on Multi Pass Rendering and set Render Passes (the higher the value, the more blurry particles will appear).
10. If you want particles to appear motion blurred, increase the Motion Blur value (the higher the value, the more blurred particles will appear), and set the Render Passes value to at least the Motion Blur value minus 1. (For example, if the Motion Blur value is 4, set the Render Passes value to at least 3.)
    Important

    To render particles with Motion Blur, you must either turn on the particle’s Cache Data attribute or select Solvers > Create Particle Disk Cache. Otherwise, the particle may behave erratically when rendered.

11. If you want icons to appear in the preview, turn on the desired Display Options.
12. If you want to have a colored background, set the Background Color.
13. Close the Hardware Render Globals Attribute Editor.
14. In the Hardware Render Buffer, select a reduced resolution from the Render > Scale Buffer sub-menu.
15. Do one of the following:
    • To preview a single frame, select Render > Test Render.
    • To preview an animation, select Render > Render Sequence.

    The Hardware Render Buffer displays each frame as it is rendered.

    Important

    Do not move the Hardware Render Buffer or drag another window over it during rendering. Disable any screen saver software before you start rendering. (Maya saves hardware rendered images by taking a screen shot of the Hardware Render Buffer.)

    • To cancel rendering, press Esc.
    • To display the view of your scene after rendering is completed, click inside the Hardware Render Buffer.
    • To view a rendered animation, see View rendered hardware particles.