
On systems with sufficient memory and graphic cards, Viewport 2.0 provides large scene performance optimization and higher quality lighting and shaders. It allows for high interactivity: you can tumble complex scenes with many objects as well as large objects with heavy geometry.
To switch to Viewport 2.0, select Renderer > Viewport 2.0 from the Panel Menus.
Viewport 2.0 supports the following features.
Follow these links to navigate to the section of interest:
component Isolate Select
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, multisample anti-aliasing, and depth of field)
thick lines support via Windows > Settings/Preferences > Preferences > Display > View > Line Width for both solid and dashed lines
color preferences can be set via Window > Settings/Preferences > Color Settings
limitation: color preferences for deformers and dynamics are not supported
Windows > Settings/Preferences > Preferences > Display > View > Wireframe on shaded > None mode is supported
crease edge pre-selection
influence color and color set support on vertex points
Display Alpha As Grey Scale (under Shape node > Mesh Controls) supported
displaying hard edges in customized colors
backface culling
support for symbols: box, U, and V
per Surface Patch shading, including per-patch shading for trim surfaces
false color support for Soft Selection , Soft Modification and skin weights
trim surfaces
Trim Edge selection of surfaces
UV projection
NURBS tessellation support provided by ARUBA technology
This technology provides improved performance, especially for the support of trimmed surfaces.
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
display of normal maps for Maya shaders in left-handed and right-handed tangent space (Tangent Space > Coordinate System under shape node)
HLSL shaders with DirectX 11
Snow texture
approximated mental ray shader support:
to visualize your changes.
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.
For ambient lights, only a single non-directional ambient light is supported.
Casts shadows and Receive shadows supported for geometry
For more information regarding API support for Viewport 2.0, see the API Guide at http://www.autodesk.com/me-sdk-docs.
OpenGL and DirectX11 modes support Alembic-based cache files created by the Alembic Cache (AbcExport and AbcImport) and GPU
Cache (gpuCache) plug-ins.
improved heads up display performance (including manipulators and other UI elements)
improved tessellation performance with ARUBA technology
reduced texture loading time
improved performance for several polygon modeling operations: combine, separate, extract and Boolean
matrix animation cache support for joints and HIK elements
GPU Instancing enabled by default so that if you have multiple instances (or especially a large number of instances) of a
Maya shape, and all of which use the same material, then they render using hardware instancing for much faster rendering results.
See GPU Instancing for more information.
Faster file loading when loading nested references
Improved scene initialization time for large scenes with complex hierarchies
Performance improvement for some scenes when using Smooth Mesh Preview
support for the base lattice UI
visibility of bones in Viewport 2.0 is controlled by the parent joint and not the child joint
muscle
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.
isolate select support
support for onscreen and offscreen Viewport 2.0 rendering in OpenGL and DX11 modes
setting a custom size that is larger than the display supported for onscreen and offscreen playblast
create an image plane and/or attach it to a specified camera using the imagePlane command
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")`;
Grease Pencil
3D Paint
The following dynamics features are supported:

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 AutodeskUberShader, see DirectX11 Shader.
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:
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.
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