Output Settings

Operation: Specifies what XGen does with generated primitives.

Render: Renders the primitives using the renderer specified by the Maya Render Settings window and XGen mental ray Settings .
Create XPD File: Specifies that primitives render to a .xpd cache file. A .xpd cache file contains information about the geometry, location, and attribute values of each primitive in the Description on a per-patch basis. The cache files are named using the geometry name. Use this option to create file versions of pre-computed and baked primitives.
Create Guides: Specifies that the current primitives render as guides using the values set in the Generator Attributes. When rendering with this option, a new set of guides is created at the generated locations.
Create MEL File: Saves a MEL file containing a script which creates all the primitives in this Description as Maya geometry. Use this option as a way of converting large numbers of instanced XGen primitives to editable native Maya geometry.
Create Particle File: Select this to bake out primitives to .pda or .pdb particle database files.

Use this to if you want to save the primitives as points that are not bound to the original mesh surface. You can then import them into a Maya scene. The particle database file includes a number of shading parameters with each primitive. This let you create a new shading network that is similar to the primitives' original shading.
Create Point File: Saves the generated primitive locations as points in a .xuv point file.

If you want to create a point for each guide, set Operation to Create Guides. This generates a single primitive for each guide and therefore result in a single point location for each guide being rendered out.

Percent: Controls the percentage of generated primitives that appear in the preview.
Renderer: Specifies the renderer to use for the Description.

Renderer-specific settings can appear for supported renderers. For example, when you select mental ray from the list, render settings appear in mental ray sections of the Preview/Output tab.
Primitive Bound: Sets the padding added to the bounding box of XGen surfaces to account for space occupied by primitives. To prevent primitives from being clipped when rendering, click Auto Set to set this value automatically.
Auto Set: Automatically calculates and sets the Primitive Bound. Click before rendering if the size of primitives has changed.
Only primitives in the view: Render primitives in the camera view (frustum). This only affects the final render, and not the preview.
View Margin: Control how far a primitive can be outside the view and still be included in the rendering. Use this with Only primitives in the view.
Save Folder: Specifies the location of files generated when Operation is set to Create XPD File, Create MEL File, Create Particle File, or Create Point File
Replace Existing Guides: (for Create Guides Operation only) When on, XGen replaces the guides in the XPD file with the new guides that are created.
Apply Modifier: (for Create Guides Operation only) Bakes the effect of any modifiers into the guides that are created.
Mask: (for Create Particle File Operation only) Attach a map to this attribute to control which primitives to save. Primitives generated in masked areas (black) are not saved.

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