Display Preferences

| General | Component Display | Time Display Format | Color Management

Various performance options and preferences for display.

To display: Choose File Preferences and click Display.

General

Performance Options

Update All Views During Interaction	Causes all viewpoint views to update simultaneously each time you modify an element in the scene. When on, this feature reduces the speed at which the scene updates. When off, the view you are interacting with gets refresh priority and the refresh of the other viewport views will lag behind.
Enable View Frustum Culling for New Scenes	Activates the View Frustum Culling option by default, in new scenes. This improves the display speed by drawing only the objects within the camera's field of view.
Sync Redraw to Display (v-sync)	Tries to turn the v-sync option for your display driver off (default) or on. Disabling v-sync improves playback performance, but can result in minor visual artifacts if the frame changes during a screen redraw. This option is available on Windows systems only, and does not work with all display cards and drivers. If it is not available, your driver does not support the necessary extensions. You should assume that v-sync is on. If this preference does not correspond with the information displayed when showing frame rates in the viewports, then your driver is overriding application settings. In your driver's settings, you should set v-sync to "application controlled" (or equivalent). If you like, you can turn off the sync on or off display by deselecting the Show Vertical Sync (v-sync) Status in Frame Rate option on the Playback Info tab of the Objects. Note that if Softimage detects an NVIDIA GeForce-based video card, the Sync Redraw to Display (v-sync) preference is ignored: Softimage will not attempt to switch the video card's v-sync on or off regardless of the preference or environment settings. If you are experiencing problems with other cards that you think may be related to vertical sync, you can set the XSI_NO_VSYNC environment variable. See Environment Variables [Advanced Setup and Configuration].
Optimize Hardware View Clipping	When View Frustum Culling is activated, objects that fall entirely within the camera's field of view are drawn with hardware clipping planes disabled.
Don't Recompute Mesh Normals	Does not recompute the normals of polygon mesh objects when updating. This speeds up playback but may cause visual artifacts.
Advanced Hardware Particle Display	Activates hardware optimizations for displaying particles. Turn this off if you experience problems with particle display.
Allow Approximate Operators	Uses approximate envelope deformations in the 3D views to increase performance during interaction and playback. With standard enveloping, the geometry is deformed and then the new normals are computed. With approximate enveloping, both the geometry and the normals are deformed. There are other performance enhancements as well, so the result can be faster even in wireframe display. Standard enveloping is always used when rendering, including in the render region. This means that the shading can be different between the rendered result and the display in the 3D views. The following limitations apply: Approximate envelope deformations apply only to polygon meshes. The envelope operator must be the topmost operator in the stack, otherwise the display uses the standard envelope deformation. The envelope operator must be above the Modeling region marker in the stack, otherwise the display uses the standard envelope deformation. Approximate envelope deformations may be slower with user normals.

Display Options

Enable View Headlight for New Scenes	When activated, new scenes have the Headlight, as configured in the Camera Display Options, activated by default.
Highlight Property Set Owners	Objects whose properties are currently displayed in open property editors are highlighted in the viewports.
Use Coarse Step By Default for Interaction and Playback	The UV coordinates of NURBS type objects are displayed in coarse mode (only one step is calculated and displayed between knots).
Enable On-screen Editing of Custom "DisplayInfo" Parameters	Allows on-screen editing of custom and proxy parameters displayed in 3D views (that is, when there is a custom parameter set whose name begins with "DisplayInfo"). When this option is on, you can: Click and drag on a parameter name to modify the value. Drag to the left to decrease the value, and drag to the right to increase it. Press Ctrl for coarse control, press Shift for fine control, or press Ctrl+Shift for ultra-fine control. Press Alt to extend beyond the range of the parameter's slider in its property editor (if the slider range is smaller than its total range). If the parameter that you click on is not marked, it becomes marked. If it is already marked, then all marked parameters are modified as you drag. Double-click on a numeric value to edit it using the keyboard. The current value is highlighted, so you can type in a new value. Only the parameter you click on is affected. Double-click on a Boolean value to toggle it. Only the parameter you click on is affected. Click on an animation icon to set or remove a key for the corresponding parameter. Right-click on an animation icon to open the animation context menu for the corresponding parameter. The color of the animation icon indicates the following information: Gray: The parameter is not animated. Red: There is a key for the current value at the current frame. Yellow: The parameter is animated by an fcurve, and the current value has been modified but not keyed. Green: The parameter is animated by an fcurve, and the current value is the interpolated result between keys. Blue: The parameter is animated by something other than an fcurve (expression, constraint, mixer, etc.).
Font	Specifies a typeface to use when displaying parameters and values in 3D views (that is, when there is a custom parameter set whose name begins with "DisplayInfo"). Type the name of a font that is installed on your computer. On Windows, you can use any installed font, including TrueType and OpenType (*.ttf). On Linux, you require a corresponding .bdf file. Softimage looks for fonts in your $MWHOME/fonts directory.
Font Size	Specifies the size of type in points to use when displaying parameters and values in 3D views. This option is available only if you have set a non-default font above.
Clip Drawing to Camera Film Gate	Clips the scene image to display only what's within the film gates when viewing from a camera view in a viewport or Object view. When this option is off, the scene image continues into the film gates. You can then change the film gate color and level of transparency using the Film Gate sliders in the Scene Colors Property Editor. See Film Gates in Camera Views [Viewing and Playback] for more information.
Start with maximized Viewport B when New Scene	Shows the camera view (viewport B) maximized when you start a new scene. If this option is off, new scenes show all four viewports (Top, Front, Left, and Camera) by default.

High Quality Viewport Options

Enable

Enables High Quality display mode in the viewports. See Configuring the High Quality View.

Turning this off disables High Quality mode for all viewports in all scenes, overriding the viewports' individual settings in their Camera Display properties. When it is disabled, viewports use a simple OpenGL display mode when High Quality is chosen.

You can also completely disable High Quality mode using the XSI_DISABLE_HIGH_QUALITY_VIEWPORT_PASSES environment variable. See Environment Variables.

Shader Profile

The shader profile to use for High Quality display mode. The default setting Latest automatically queries your graphic card and driver for its capabilities. You can choose another option if you need to use a specific profile, or if you experience problems that might be caused by your driver misreporting its capabilities.

Most recent ATI cards should support Latest and Multi-vendor GLSL. Most recent NVIDIA cards should support all available profiles.

High Quality Viewport Defaults

Enable Shadows	Enables depth-mapped shadows by default for High Quality display mode in new scenes.
Shadow Map Resolution	The default resolution for shadow maps in High Quality display mode in new scenes.
Multisampling	The default number of subsamples per pixel for anti-aliasing in High Quality display mode in new scenes.

Hardware Texture Options

Scale Hardware Textures Up to Nearest Power of Two

When enabled, OGL textures whose resolutions are not "powers of two" in one or both dimensions, are scaled up, rather than down.

The resolution of OGL textures must be a "power of two" in both dimensions. For example, a 256x128 texture is OK, but a 250x120 texture must be scaled to the nearest power of two in order to display properly.

Maximum Hardware Texture Size for New Image Clips and Thumbnails

Defines the default maximum resolution at which new image clips are displayed in shaderballs as well as in Textured and Textured Decal viewing modes.

Thumbnail

Size	Specifies the size of thumbnails displayed in various views (the render tree, for example. Choose Small, Medium, or Large.
Image Clip Size	The size of preview images in property editors, in pixels square.

Component Display

Points

Point Size

Specifies the size of geometric points in pixels.

Polynodes

You can turn on the display of polynode bisectors on the Components tab of the Camera Visibility property editor.

Min Length in Pixels of Polynode Bisectors	Sets the minimum length of polynode bisectors in pixels.
Max Length in Pixels of Polynode Bisectors	Sets the maximum length of polynode bisectors in pixels.
Scale Factor w/r to Smallest Adjacent Edge	Sets the length of the polynode bisector as a fraction of the shorter of the two adjacent edges. For example, if this option is set to 0.2 and the shorter edge is 50 pixels long, then the bisector will be 10 pixels long as long as the minimum and maximum lengths are respected.
Pitch Angle in Degrees of Polynode Bisectors	Sets the angle in degrees by which the bisector sticks out from the plane of its two edges. This makes it easier to select a bisector when the polygon is almost perpendicular to the screen.

Normals

Normals Scaling

Changes the display size of shading normals in the 3D views.

Time Display Format

These options are not available if you have selected Custom frame rate as the Frame Format.

Display As Frames	Toggles between displaying time in the timeline as frame numbers or in timecode (hours:minutes:seconds:frames). This option is not available if the Display Format has been set to milliseconds.
Use Custom Display Format	Allows you to select a custom format from the Display Format list.
Display Format	Displays time in the timeline as milliseconds, SMPTE Film (24fps), SMPTE NTSC drop-frame or non-drop frame format, EBU PAL (25fps), or audio samples.

Color Management

The color management display preference stores a global lookup table that can be built from values in a gamma LUT file or from RGB gamma values specified using the Gamma Values sliders on this property page.

This preference allows you to enable display-only gamma correction in render regions, shaderballs, render previews, as well as in most of the color control widgets throughout Softimage. This preference does not actually modify the image's pixel values.

The color management display preference is set per computer display and it is not persisted with the scene. You have to set the preference for each computer that needs to perform gamma correction.

For more information about the various ways you can do gamma correction in Softimage, see Displaying and Rendering Gamma Correction [Data Management].

Apply To...

Render Regions and Viewports	Applies the gamma correction specified by the Source option to render regions, as well as to viewports in High Quality display mode.
Render Pass and Preview	Applies the gamma correction specified by the Source option to render passes and render previews.
Shader Balls	Applies the gamma correction specified by the Source option to shaderballs.
UI Widgets	Applies the gamma correction specified by the Source option to color widgets. The color controls allow you to toggle back and forth between the regular and gamma corrected display without affecting the global gamma correction preference setting.
FX Viewers	Applies the gamma correction specified by the Source option to the Fx Viewer. You can override this in the Fx Viewer's preferences.

Profile Source

Source

Select the source for the RGB values to be used for gamma correction:

From Gamma Values: Performs the gamma correction using values set with the RGB Gamma Values sliders.
From LUT File: Performs the gamma correction using values set with an on-disk LUT file.

From LUT File

The Source From LUT File option supports various LUT file types when applying a gamma correction to images for proper viewing on the target medium.

Filename

Choose the LUT file you want to use to preform a display-only gamma correction. The Filename drop-down menu displays the names of all the available LUT files on your system.

Softimage scans the \Data\Preferences\Default\ColorManagement folder of the installation location and populates the LUT list with any supported LUT files it finds. You can drag and drop your LUT files into the ColorManagement folder (if the ColorManagement folder does not exist, you can create it at this location) and they will be made available from this drop-down menu the next time you start-up Softimage. This is also supported for workgroups.

The LUT file is defined solely by its file name (no path information is stored), so that you can easily export preferences across machines.

Softimage supports the following LUT file formats:

.csp format - 1D & 3D LUTs - Rising Sun Research cineSpace and cineSync products.
.look format - 3D LUT only - IRIDAS SpeedGrade products.
.cube format - 3D LUT only - ARRI ARRICUBE color management system.
.lut format - 1D LUT only - AutoDesk Flame and Flint products.
.3dl format - 3D LUT only - Autodesk LUSTRE

Softimage provides a few color profile presets based on a generic 1D LUT that you can use or modify for your own purposes. This LUT file format is very simple and it can be easily re-created using a spreadsheet tool. A one-to-one look up table provides a single value to get a single value, such as when you replace a specific color in one pixel with another color. Typically the LUT file contains a table for each RGB color channel.

If no LUT files are found then the menu is grayed out and "No LUT" is displayed.

Gamma Values

The Source From Gamma Values option performs the gamma correction using values set with the RGB Gamma Values sliders.

Red	Applies the specified gamma correction value to the Red color channel.
Green	Applies the specified gamma correction value to the Green color channel.
Blue	Applies the specified gamma correction value to the Blue color channel.
Lock Sliders	When enabled, all of the gamma color channel sliders behave as a single slider, from which you can adjust all three values at once.

LUT Preconditioning

These options appear only when Source is set to From LUT File.

Preconditioning	Controls how LUT values are interpreted: None assumes that LUT values are linear. Linear to Logarithmic (Toxik) converts colors from linear space to logarithmic space before the lookup. When this option is selected, the Negative Film Gamma, Cineon White Point, and Linear Reference parameters become available. Linear to Logarithmic (Cineon) converts colors from linear space to logarithmic space before the lookup. When this option is selected, the Negative Film Gamma, Cineon Black Point, and Cineon White Point parameters become available.
Negative Film Gamma	Controls the contrast between light and dark areas.
Cineon Black Point	Values equal to or below this (on a scale of 0 to 1023) are considered black.
Cineon White Point	Values above this (on a scale of 0 to 1023) are considered "brighter than white".
Linear Reference	The value (on a scale of 0 to 100) that is mapped to the Cineon White Point. For example, if you want to base the transformation on a 90% white card, then set this value to 90. The corresponding Cineon White Point is typically 685.
Toxik Default	Sets the LUT Preconditioning parameters to the default values used by Autodesk Composite (Toxik).
Cineon Default	Sets the LUT Preconditioning parameters to the default values used for Cineon.