3Delight adds some attributes to Maya's geometry and transforms. These attributes allow to conveniently toggle 3Delight features on a per-object basis. To control some of these attributes on several objects at once, please refer to Set-Based Attributes.

For light-specific attributes, please refer to Lights & Light Filters.

Geometry Attributes

Additional 3Delight attributes on all renderable geometric objects.

Visible to Camera
Visible in Diffuse
Visible in Reflections
Visible in Refractions

Sets the visibility of the underlying object to camera, diffuse, reflection and refractions ray types, respectively.

Compositing

Specifies the role played by the attached objects, at the compositing stage. Three options are available.

Regular

The objects play no special role and are shaded normally. This is the default.

Matte

The objects act as matte holdouts. Matte objects are not shaded and behave as if they were completely opaque, hiding any objects behind them, but appear in the image as transparent black pixels. 

Prelit

The objects are considered to be part of a "prelit" sub-scene, where direct and indirect lighting is baked into the shading. They will reflect light from and towards regular objects in the scene but, just as matte objects, they will appear as transparent black pixels in the primary output variable. This is used to implement Prelit Materials as described in Prelit materials: light transport for live-action elements in production rendering.

Deformation Motion Blur

Sets deformation blur mode of operation for this object. It can be one of the following options:

Additional Samples

By default, only two motion samples will be used to motion blur the deformation. This control allows using additional deformation samples for the geometry. This is necessary for geometry deformation with noticeable motion blur curvature within the image.

Mesh 3Delight Attributes

The following additional attribute is offered on polygonal mesh objects.

The 3Delight attributes on a mesh object.

Render Mesh as a Subdivision Surface

When on, the underlying object will be rendered as a smooth catmull-clark subdivision surface.

Curve 3Delight Attributes

The following additional attribute is offered on curve objects, such as Hair Paint Effects or XGen Groomable Splines Description nodes.

The 3Delight attributes on a curve object.

Smooth Curves

When enabled, the curves are rendered as cubic splines. Depending on the number of segments of the curve and its rendered size, this may produce a smoother curve. When disabled, the curves are rendered as line segments, similar to how they are rendered in the viewport. This generally offers better performance with little visible difference unless the curves appear very large in the rendered image.

Transforms Attributes

The 3Delight attributes on a transform.

Additional Samples

Specifies how many additional motion samples 3Delight should use with rendering motion blur.  These samples will be applied on the transforms and not on the objects themselves.  For example, if you wish to have more accurate motion blur on rotating propeller, increase Additional Samples on the transform that is responsible of the rotation and not on the propeller's geometry.

Here is the effect of motion blur on a propeller without the use of Additional Samples:

As can be seen in this example, more motion samples are necessary to accurately render the high curvature of the blur. Here is the result when using Additional Samples:

Displacement Shader Attributes

The 3Delight attributes on a displacement shader

Render as Bump

Transform displacements into bump. This is the recommended way of doing  bump mapping as it is conceptually close to displacement mapping. Bump maps are more efficient to render but of lesser visually quality than displacement maps.

Displacement Bound

Specifies the displacement bound for the attached objects, which is the amount by which the bounding box of each object should be increased to include the displaced surfaces. Failure to provide the renderer with a decent value will result in shading artifacts (when the value is too small) or inefficiency (when the value is too large). Refer to this section for details about when you should bother to adjust this value, and how to figure that value. The default value is ‘1.0’.

Camera Attributes

The 3Delight Camera Attributes.

Shutter

Shutter Angle

The angle of the opening in a rotary shutter disc, in degrees. A value of 360 degrees means that the whole frame duration is used as the exposure time (this yields maximum motion blur). A value of 180 degrees means half the frame duration will be exposed for rendering (thus reducing the motion blur).

Shutter Opening Efficiency
Shutter Closing Efficiency

Sets how “efficient” the shutter of the camera is at opening and closing times. ‘1.0’ is maximum efficiency, meaning that the shutter of the camera opens instantaneously, and then closes instantaneously, which is a non-natural shutter. Lower values, such as the default value of ‘0.75’, will simulate slower opening camera shutter and produces softer motion blurs, closer to what is expected in real life cameras.

Lens Aperture

Use Finite Number of Blades

Turning this attribute on allows customization of the aperture shape using the following attributes. This attribute is off by default, which produces a perfectly round aperture.

Number of Blades

The aperture is shaped after a regular polygon; this attribute specifies how many sides this polygon has. This can also been seen as the number of blades of the diaphragm that controls the aperture. The minimum number of blades is 3, which produces triangular out-of-focus highlights. 

Rotation

The angle of the rotation to apply on the aperture, in degrees.

Projection

Projection Type

Several projection types are available. The possible values are detailed in a table below.

Auxiliary Field of View

Specifies a field of view, in degrees. This is used for the following projection types: