Quick Start #1 - First Render
To quickly see how 3Delight can render your scene:
- Load the plug-in (using the Plug-in Manager)
- Open a scene
- Set the default renderer to '3Delight' in Maya's Render Settings dialog.
- Start the render as usual
Quick Start #2 - Try another Render Engine
Now that you have already loaded the plug-in, have seen the Render Settings dialog and rendered with 3Delight, lets try to explore a few rendering options:
- Bring the Render Settings dialog.
- Click on the "Render Engine" group to open it.
- Select the 'REYES' or 'Path Tracing' for the option Render Engine
- Start the render as usual
By default 3Delight uses the 'Path Tracing' Render Engine which offers the best quality/performance for higher pixel complexity, photorealistic, projects.
For lower pixel complexity projects, such as anime and non photorealistic projects, the 'REYES' Render Engine generally offer faster performance.
Each Render Engine has its own strength.
Quick Start #3 - Test Oversampling effect on Speed
- Click on the "Quality" group to open it
- Assign Pixel Samples to a value of 8 x 8
- Render as usual
As you may notice, rendering speed may be slower, but not so significantly with higher sampling rate.
It is worth to notice that in 3Delight Indirect Illumination Samples do not grow when Pixel Samples are raised, with obvious performance gains.
Read also How to Eliminate Sampling Noises to better understand how to resolve sampling in 3Delight.
Quick Start #4 - Render Polygon Mesh as Subdivision Surface
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- Via the 3Delight Relationship Editor or AssignmentPanel (the 3Delight for Maya way)
The advantage of this method is that you set the option on a large hierarchy of objects quickly. Because this method does not affect the OpenGL viewport there is no performance loss when setting the attributes on large poly meshes. - Via Maya smooth mesh shape nodes attributes or Maya "3" Hotkey (the Maya way)
The advantage of this method is that you just need to hit the hotkey and you will see the object displayed as smooth mesh also in the OpenGL viewport.
The main disadvantages here is that for large number of meshes and large poly counts Maya Viewport will be lagging.
For the first method:
Bring up the 3Delight Relationship Editor.
- In the "Shaders / Attribs" section, choose Create > Geometry Attributes Node.
- Click on the new geometry attributes node in the "Shaders / Attribs" section and click on a polygon mesh object in the "Objects" section.
- Right-click on the geometry attributes node in the Shaders / Attribs" section, and pick "Show in AE".
- In the Attribute Editor, right-click on the Add / Remove Attributes... button and navigate to Geometry > Polygons > Poly As Subd.
- Turn on the newly added "Poly As Subd" attribute.
- Render as usual.
The polygon mesh object will be rendered as a subdivision surface.
For the second method , for (quick previews:)
Select your polygon object(s)
- Hit the "3" key, to display your object as a smooth proxy in the Maya Viewport
- Render as usual.
The polygon mesh object will be rendered as a subdivision surface.
It is worth to mention that unlike other render enginesregardless of the method, in 3Delight there is no need to set a number of subdivisions to pre-tessellate subdivisions, nor a "strategy" to subdivide the mesh (e.g. length/distance/angle): 3Delight always resolves subdivision surfaces analytically, at render time, with obvious advantage in UI/UX and in visual quality since no matters how close you render your subdivision meshes, they will always be smooth.