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 workspace 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.
Important
  • Vertex Animation Cache is disabled by default. Using this feature, you can tumble the camera, move transform nodes and adjust lighting while obtaining real-time preview in Viewport 2.0.
  • Vertex Animation Cache does not support caching of dynamics simulations.
  • Sub-frame animation is not supported when Vertex Animation Cache is enabled.
  • When 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.
  • In 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.
  • If 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).
  • 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. This algorithm is ideal for distant objects where you require a quick algorithm for rendering transparency but do not require high quality. 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.
  • Depth Peeling: Depth peeling transparency renders per-pixel transparency via multiple passes. At each pass, the next transparent layer in each pixel is peeled and composited behind previous layers. After the set number of peeled layers, all remaining layers are handled in a single pass using the weighted average algorithm. This helps to balance transparency quality versus performance, as depth peeling provides very high quality transparency but with a performance cost.
    NoteCurrently, use of Multisample Anti-aliasing with Depth Peeling is not supported.
Transparency Quality
For the Depth Peeling transparency algorithm, use this slider to select the number of layers to peel before Maya starts using the weighted average algorithm. Choose from a range of 2 to 10 passes.

Maximum Texture Resolution Clamping

When Clamp Texture Resolution is enabled, any textures with a resolution above the Max Texture Resolution are downscaled so that you can still work in textured mode while saving memory.

If your scene contains more high resolution textures than your video card has enough memory to handle, your textures are not loaded and your scene appears in non-textured mode. An error message appears indicating that the texture ram limit has been exceeded and suggesting that you reduce the Max Texture Resolution clamp.

This error message appears whenever the video card has insufficient memory to handle the textures, which can occur if Clamp Texture Resolution is not enabled; or, if the Max Texture Resolution is set too high and the texture resolution is not downscaled enough for the available GPU memory.

Max Texture Resolution can be set between a range of 32 to 8192.

After changing the Max Texture Resolution, you must click Re-load All Textures to apply the updated limit to the textures already loaded in your scene. Otherwise, the updated limit is only applied to newly loaded textures.

Bake Resolution for Unsupported Texture Types

Color Textures, Bump Textures

Maya shading nodes that are supported as baked textures are listed in Internal texture baking in Viewport 2.0. You can set the resolution for baked textures using these attributes.

Note

You must click the Re-bake All Textures button 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 workspace at a time. If more than one workspace is using Viewport 2.0, then motion blur is disabled for all workspaces 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 2013 only supports motion blur for objects whose transformations change over time, for example, surfaces or camera transforming. Maya 2013 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.

Anti-aliasing

Multisample Anti-aliasing
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.

NoteSupported formats are card dependent and only valid options are displayed in the drop-down menu.
Tip32-bit floating point render target options should be used in conjunction with gamma correction to reduce banding artifacts.

Batch Render Options

X-Ray Mode
Select this option to enable x-ray mode. X-ray mode is supported for both scene view 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 scene view 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, Active 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. See Lighting for more information about the various light modes.
NoteActive mode is the equivalent of Use Selected Lights.
Single-sided Lighting
Select this option to enable single-sided lighting so that the inside faces of the objects are not illuminated. When this option is disabled, two-sided lighting is used. See Lighting > Two Sided Lighting for more information.
Render Mode
Select among different render modes. You can choose to render in wireframe mode, or to render your objects shaded and/or textured, or to render wireframe on shaded and/or textured.
Render Override
You can override the scene view 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 appears in this drop-down list.
Object Type Filters
Select from the list of objects to filter them out of your batch render. De-select an item to filter it out of your Render View render or batch render.

The Viewport UI option controls the filtering of the following items:

Components such as:

  • faces, vertices, edges, UVs, normals, tangents, centers
  • CVs, edit points, hulls
  • pivots
  • component IDs

Ornaments such as:

  • heads up display
  • grid
  • camera name
  • axes

Miscellaneous UI such as:

  • dimensions / measurements
  • annotations
  • handles
  • manipulators
  • motion paths
NoteThe Viewport UI toggle must respect the UI toggle. If the UI toggle is enabled, then the Viewport UI toggle is also enabled. If the UI toggle is disabled, then the Viewport UI toggle is also disabled.
TipAny element that you toggle off in this window does not render in the Render View or in the batch render. Your settings under the Show panel menu, on the other hand, filters out objects in the scene view.

Filtering for Extension for Maya 2013

The Viewport UI toggle is not used in Extension for Maya 2013. Instead, you can use the Components, Ornaments and Misc. UI controls to filter out these elements. Refer to the lists above for the list of objects that each filter controls.

The wireframe can be filtered using the UI checkbox. Motion paths (both the NURBS curve and the frame number) can be filtered using the Motion Trails checkbox. Mental ray custom area lights are filtered by the Lights checkbox.

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