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3Delight for Maya is a fully integrated Maya plug-in that lets you render Maya scenes using the powerful 3Delight rendering coreengine. A  A wide support of all native Maya geometries, lighting, shading and FX features is provided. See Limitations for more details on what is currently unsupported. 3Delight for Maya is compatible with Maya versions 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015 on all 64-bit platforms: Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.:

The 3Delight for Maya The plug-in is designed to be easy to use and integrates integrate all the features needed in modern production pipelines:

• Production grade Path Tracing with highly optimized multi-bounce global illumination
• Programmable shaders with ability to easily deploy custom RSL and OSL shaders in MayaPath Tracing Global Illumination
• HDRI Image Based Lighting with higher quality environment sampling
• Physically/visually plausible BSDF-based materials, including , including:
  • a general purpose, dual-layer, PBR material (3Delight Material)
  • a physical solution for (human) skin (3Delight Skin)
  • a complete physical solution for hair
• Physical solution for Subsurface Scattering (SSS), with multiple & single scattering output
• Area Lights (including geometric area lights)
• •  (3Delight Hair), simulating primary reflections (R), secondary reflections (TRT), light multiple scattering and transmission through the hair fibers (TT) and glints
  • a physical glass material (3Delight Glass)
  • a physical metallic material with easy controls (3Delight Metal)
• Area Lights (support of builtin Maya Area Light and arbitrary geometric area lights)
• Progressive final frame rendering (using the same engine as final frame rendering: and converging to virtually the same results)
• Interactive Progressive Rendering (IPR) with scene edits support for: cameras, lights and materials
• Integrated Volume Rendering of OpenVDB caches (compatible with OpenVDB 3.0+)  
• Full Fully automatic Color Management out of the box
• LRU Network Cache for textures and archivesarchives — requires 3Delight Studio Pro
• UDIM texture support (with Mari-style UDIM tile mapping by default)
• PTEX texture support
• Sub-Pixel Displacement (analytic, no pretessellation), with VDM support for both scalar and vector displacement (typically from ZBrush, Mudbox, Mari)
  • Optional Vertex Displacement
• Subdivision Surfaces (analytic, no pretessellation)
• • (for large displacements & VDMs)
• Infinitely-smooth analytic* subdivision surfaces with support for edge and vertex subdivision creases — (* no pre-tessellation)
• Real round corners on polygon meshes via subdivision surfaces
• Powerful scene elements (sets) and image layers AOV systems
• Multi-Light Output (per-light AOV of any component, of any light path) -- requires Path Tracinglights, light groups, incandescent geometry, environment light) for Physically-Based Compositing — Path Tracing only
• Multi-Mask Output (masks for objects, materials, or bothMulti-Masks Output (output of any object/material masks)
• EXR (multi-channel) Image File Output
• Deep EXR Image File output
• image file output
• High performance Deep EXR image file output supporting highly efficient compression
• Efficient simultaneous Multi-Camera rendering — Stereo / VR is the case with 2 cameras
• Spherical, Cylindrical and Fisheye camera projection rendering, compatible with multi-camera rendering — Path Tracing only
• Physical Lens Shaders — Path Tracing onlySpherical and Cylindrical camera projection rendering – requires Path Tracing
  
• Caustics (via Photon Mapping or forward path tracing in OSL)
• Anti-aliased, sub-sampled, Outline Rendering with per-variable AOV component detection and varying color/width/depthfade
• A powerful system to assign shader collections and shader overrides.
• 3Delight Display (a-k-a "i-display"), a powerful cross-platform interactive image viewer with:
  • multi AOVs
  • HDPI support
  • Multi-Light Mixer
  • OpenColorIO color profiles
  • "half" datatype support
  • 4K playback support at 60fps
  • statistic display
• Ability to choose the legacy REYES algorithm (typically for projects with lower pixel complexity) (Ability to choose REYES algorithm (see Pros and Cons of REYES vs Path Tracing)
• Ability to choose choose the legacy Point-Based Global Illumination and  and Point-Based Subsurface algorithm (typically for projects with lower pixel complexity)Efficient simultaneous Multi-Camera rendering — "Stereo" is the case with 2 cameras
• Anti-aliased Outline Rendering with per-variable AOV component detection
• I-Display: powerful image viewer with multi AOVs, light mixer and 4K support

The 3Delight for Maya plug-in benefits from the from the powerful and many unique features of the 3Delight rendering engine:

• Unidirectional, multi bounce, forward Path Tracing (default) and , using either the RSL or the OSL shading framework
• Legacy REYES rendering mode, using the RSL shading framework
• High performance Volume Rendering (both in Path Tracing and REYES) with support of OpenVDB 3.0
• Proprietary, higher quality, environment sampling
• Physical solution (interactive, no pre-computation) for Subsurface Scattering (SSS) using the subsurface() shadeop, with multiple and single scattering output and ability to resolve small geometric detail.
• Physically/visually plausible BSDF evaluation via the bsdf() and trace() RSL functions, featuring the following BSDFs for direct and indirect lighting:
  uniform, 

• cosine

• , oren-nayar

• , blinn

• , ashikhmin-shirley

• , cook-torrance

• , ward, ggx (glass-ggx

• ), gtr (glass-gtr), hair
• Transformation and Deformation Motion Blur with support for topological changes
• Advanced OSL (Open Shading Language) support with full support of both closures and patterns in path tracing.
• RSL1.0 / RSL2.0 Shading Language support with optimising optimizing compiler and very efficient last stage JIT compilation
• Procedural Geometry / Archives (with delayed or immediate loading)
• Dynamic Space Partitioning
• RIB I/O — feature available with 3Delight Studio Pro
• Distributed Rendering — feature available with 3Delight Studio Pro
• Full geometry support, without any tessellation, of higher order geometry such as: subdivision surfaces, NURBS, curves, points, implicit surfaces, constructive solid geometries (CSG), quadrics, patches...
• Massive instancing of geometry with tiny impact on memory footprint

• Bake to texture (bake2d) and bake to pointcloud (bake3d) functionalities