Renderer > Viewport 2.0

Select Viewport 2.0 for a high performance scene view that optimizes large scenes. It allows you to interact with complex scenes with many objects as well as large objects with heavy geometry.

Renderer > Viewport 2.0 >

These are descriptions of the options in the Hardware Renderer 2.0 Setting window.

Note

Memory issues are more likely to occur if you are using a 32-bit version of Maya. Scene sizes supported on 32-bit systems, or systems with less than 4 GB of memory may be limited.

Performance

Consolidate world

This option attempts to combine geometry caches for shapes using a common material. In many scenes, this can produce a significant improvement in performance at the cost of additional memory.

This option performs a memory check. If you are at risk of running into memory issues, you will see a warning as follows:

"There may not be enough memory to load the scene into Viewport 2.0 while consolidate world is turned on."

Tip

If the scene view becomes unstable, try disabling this option.

Warning

Some operations may incur slight delays when using this option.

Vertex Animation Cache

When enabled, Maya caches the resulting mesh data for each frame of your animation, allowing for much more interactive scrubbing of your animation.

Disable: Select this option to disable Vertex Animation Cache. Select this option if you are working on a modeling or lighting workflow where you are not playing back the scene and you are performing only interactive workflows.
Hardware: This option caches the vertex buffers on the GPU. Hardware is faster than System if there is enough memory on the graphics card to store all of the scene, texture and animation frames. Otherwise; if there is not enough memory, you may experience system slowdowns. Switch to System if this occurs.
System: This option caches the vertex buffers in system memory. System is slower than Hardware, but typically there is much more memory available for caching buffers.

NoteWhen using this option, you must ensure that you have sufficient memory available for large scenes or complex scenes with many objects or heavy geometry. Performance may be compromised if you select this option and sufficient memory is not available.

ImportantIn order for this option to work, any history nodes that change the topology of mesh data must come before any node that changes based on time. This includes the Deform User Normals option on the skinCluster node and the polyTransfer node, which should be set to off in order to work with Vertex Animation Cache.

TipFor a scene with many characters and multiple skinCluster nodes, a quick way of disabling the Deform User Normals option is to select all of the skinCluster nodes in the Outliner (Window > Outliner), then set them to Off via the Attribute Spread Sheet (Window > General Editors > Attribute Spread Sheet).

NoteIf your Playback speed is clamped, for example, to 24 fps, Vertex Animation Cache may require several cycles to completely cache all of the animation in the timeline. An alternate method to increase efficiency is to set the Playback speed to Play every frame and Max Playback Speed to the desired frame rate. You can set the Playback speed via the Preferences window, Time Slider category (Window > Settings/Preferences > Preferences).

Important If your scene includes any expression nodes, then the performance improvement the caching provides is reduced because the expression node forces some DG evaluation which could otherwise be skipped over.

Thread Dependency Graph Evaluation

When enabled, Maya attempts to evaluate separate characters (sub-graphs of DG) in separate threads.

Light Limit

Use this option to set the maximum number of lights that are used in rendering. Hidden lights are not included. The default is 8 lights and the maximum is 16.

Transparency Algorithm

Select from the following transparency sorting algorithms.

Simple: No transparency sorting.
Object Sorting: Objects are sorted by depth. Objects further away are drawn before objects closer to the camera.
Weighted Average: This is an order-independent transparency algorithm, and no sorting of objects or polygons is involved. The final color is computed as a weighted average of all the transparent objects in a pixel. The advantage of this algorithm is that it is order independent and is therefore fast even for a large number of transparent objects, hair, particle systems, and so forth. It is accurate for single level transparency and is stable, with no jumping artifacts from sorting. However, it is not compatible with arbitrary plug-in shaders. Plug-in shaders revert to using the default transparency algorithm instead. By default, that is Object Sorting, unless you have set otherwise.

Bake Resolution for Unsupported Texture Types

Color Textures, Bump Textures: Maya 2D shading nodes, with the exception of File and Checker, are supported as baked textures. You can set the resolution for baked 2D textures using these attributes.

Note
You must reload the scene or press the Apply button and modify the attributes of the 2D texture in order to see the effect of the change on currently loaded textures.

Screen-space Ambient Occlusion

Enable: Select this option to enable screen space ambient occlusion.
Amount: Specifies the intensity of the ambient occlusion that occurs. Default is 1.0 but you can choose from a range of 0.0 to 3.0.
Radius: Specifies the radius of the sampling area (in screen space).
Samples: Specifies the number of occlusion samples that occur to improve the appearance of the ambient occlusion effect.

Motion Blur

Enable: Select this option to enable motion blur.
NoteMotion blur only works with one viewport at a time. If more than one viewport is using Viewport 2.0, then motion blur is disabled for all viewports using Viewport 2.0. The number of views using Viewport 2.0 does not affect the render view rendering of motion blur.
Type: This option indicates the type of motion blur that is supported. Maya 2012 only supports motion blur for objects whose transformations change over time, for example, surfaces or camera transforming. Maya 2012 does not support motion blur for surfaces that deform over time.
Shutter Open Fraction: The percentage of frame time for which the shutter of the movie camera is open. 0 denotes that the shutter is not open at all, and 1 denotes that the shutter is open for 100% of the frame time.
Sample Count: The number of samples along the motion vector for each point. A low sample count gives low quality while a high sample count gives high quality.

Note

When post-effects such as screen-space ambient occlusion, motion blur, and depth of field are enabled, the drawing of wireframe and components are not affected by these effects. Filled display for surfaces are affected. However, wireframe and components for surfaces are not blended with the filled drawing if the surface is semi-transparent. For example, if you create an object, then set its shader transparency to semi-transparent and select the object or its components, you will see a difference between enabling and disabling Screen-space Ambient Occlusion.

In addition, unlike the other transparency options, when the Weighted Average Transparency Algorithm is used, wireframe drawing is not blended with the transparent surface drawing.

Multisample Anti-aliasing

Enable: Select this option to enable multisample anti-aliasing.
Sample Count: Increase the number of samples for better anti-aliasing quality. A high Sample Count gives slower performance but with better anti-aliasing results.
NoteSample count options are video card dependent. Only valid options are displayed in the drop-down menu.

Gamma Correction

Enable / Gamma: Gamma correction is done at the end of a render to allow you to adjust for the non-linear nature of displays.

You must select Enable before setting your gamma correction. The default value is 2.2.

Floating Point Render Target

Select this option to render to a floating point buffer instead of an integer one.

R32G32B32A32_FLOAT: Select this option for 32-bits/channel, RGBA channels.
R32G32B32_FLOAT: Select this option for 32-bits/channel, RGB channels.
R16G16B16A16_FLOAT: Select this option for 16-bits/channel, RGBA channels.

NoteSupported formats are card dependent and only valid options are displayed in the drop-down menu.

Batch Render Options

X-Ray Mode: Select this option to enable x-ray mode. X-ray mode is supported for both viewport display and batch rendering.
X-Ray Joint Display: Select this option to enable x-ray joint mode. X-ray joint mode is supported for both viewport display and batch rendering.
ImportantX-ray joint mode does not work when any of Motion Blur, depth of field, or Screen-space Ambient Occlusion are enabled.
Lighting Mode: Select among the available lighting modes. Select from All, Default, and None. If there are no lights in the scene but the All option is selected, then the lighting used depends on the setting of the Enable Default Light option under the Render Settings: Common tab, Render Options section.
Render Mode: Select between the Wire, Shaded, Wire on Shaded and Default Material render modes. These are identical to the modes available for the default quality viewport. See Shading menu for more information.
Render Override: You can override the viewport renderer with your own custom renderer through the API. See MViewport2Renderer.h for classes that enable you to register your own render override. Your render override will appear in this drop-down list.
Object Type Filters: Select from the list of objects to filter them out of your batch render.