Those are global, application-level preferences for 3Delight for Softimage that are exposed in the Preferences -> Custom -> 3Delight branch of Softimage's preferences dialog (which is accessible through the File -> Preferences... menu).
The 3Delight for Softimage Preferences
RIB Texture Cache Memory
Texture Memory (MB)
Specifies how many megabytes of memory is dedicated to texture caching. From 3Delight User's Manual:
"The memory needed to hold the texture for a scene may exceed the amount of core physical memory available. To render such scenes efficiently, 3Delight uses a memory caching system to keep the texture memory footprint below a predefined threshold. This option specifies the amount of memory dedicated to texture mapping algorithms. Increasing this parameter may improve texture, shadow and environment map access performance ...".
RIB Output Options
Binary
When enabled, all RIB files and archives are written in their binary form. Binary RIB's are about 2 times smaller than corresponding ASCII RIBs.
Compressed
When enabled, all RIB files and archives are written in compressed form. Compressed RIBs are about 4 times smaller than their uncompressed counterpart. Compressed binary files are only slightly better than compressed ASCII files (compression ratios do not multiply).
Compressed RIBs are ordinary gzipped files and can be uncompressed using gunzip. This also means that 3Delight natively reads gzipped RIB files and archives. It is common to name such compressed RIBs with a '.gz' extension, such as in: scene.rib.gz.
Search Paths
Specifies the paths where to look for RenderMan shaders, textures and archives. Many paths can be specified for each type of resources; in this case, they should be separated with a colon (':').
Shaders
This path only applies to shaders that are loaded through the RenderMan shaders properties page (see section RenderMan Shaders Properties. It has absolutely nothing to do with the automatic translation of Softimage shaders. The special path `@' can also be used here to retrieve the value of environment variable `DL_SHADERS_PATH'.
Textures
This path is considered when specifying textures in RenderMan shaders loaded through the RenderMan shaders properties. They do no apply to Softimage textures: these are automatically handled by the plug-in. The special path `@' can also be used here to retrieve the value of environment variable `DL_TEXTURES_PATH'.
Archives
Specifies where to look for archives that are specified in the RIB archive property page (see section RIB Properties).
Procedurals
Specifies where to look for procedurals that are used in the RIB.
Render Tree Conversion
Shaders Optimization
Indicates which level of optimization is applied on shaders converted for 3Delight.
| Value | Description |
|---|---|
| None | No optimization is performed. Converted shaders will most likely be much slower than they ought to be. To be used only when asked by the 3Delight development team for the purpose of debugging. |
| Conservative | Only some fairly straightforward optimizations are performed. This option is a useful workaround when 'Regular' optimizations have unwanted side-effects. Same usage scenario as for the 'None' option. |
| Regular | Most standard optimizations are performed. This is the default setting. |
| Aggressive | Some experimental or time-consuming optimization are performed that may improved rendering time. This option can be a time-saver for complex scenes, but should be used with care. |
Render Output
Automatic crop for EXR data
It shrinks the data window of the EXR file to the smallest window containing all non black pixels. Since there is less data written to the EXR file, other applications may load it faster.
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