Set tessellation options

Though tessellation is determined on a per-object basis, you can manage how Maya handles the tessellation settings for the scene.

By default, Maya optimizes the tessellation settings for surfaces by:

• Storing (caching) geometry information to reduce the amount of memory used.
• Tessellating identical surfaces only once to save time and disk space.
• Reusing tessellation for the generation of depth maps.
• Calculating the bounding box scale that you define for all displacement-mapped surfaces to make rendering faster.

For more information on tessellation, see Introduction to Tessellation and Approximation.

You can turn these optimization settings on or off in the Memory and Performance Options section of the Render Settings window.

For tesselation settings for mental ray for Maya, see Approximation.

Set raytracing

Though raytracing quality is set by the options in the Raytracing Quality section of the Render Settings window (see Set raytracing quality), you can set scene optimization options in the Memory and Performance Options section of the Render Settings window.

For more information on raytracing, see Raytraced shadows in the Lighting guide.

Set multiple processors

You can control the number of processors for interactive rendering. To render with multiple processors, see Network render with Maya software.