The Softimage hardware renderer allows you to output a scene as it appears when displayed in any 3D view whose viewpoint is that of the pass camera. Most of the hardware renderer modes correspond to the 3D views' display modes: Wireframe, Shaded, Textured, and so on. All scene elements displayed in the 3D views are rendered, except for reference objects like the grid and axes.
Hardware rendering is useful for generating previews of your scene using all of the display options available in 3D views. It is also useful for outputting realtime shader effects to file. For more information about rendering realtime shaders, see Rendering Realtime Effects to File [Realtime Shaders].
For interactive preview renders, the render region has its own set of hardware renderer options. See Setting Render Region Options.
