3Delight for Maya is a fully integrated Maya plug-in that lets you render Maya scenes using the powerful 3Delight renderer. The plug-in is designed to be easy to use and integrates all the features used in modern pipelines (Global Illumination, Re-lighthing, EXR File, Deep Image Files, ...).
Quick Start
To render a scene, one can simply:
- 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
Components Overview
In a nutshell, 3Delight for Maya offers the following components:
3Delight Rendering Attributes
All 3Delight rendering options can be edited in Maya's Render Settings dialog. Since all these options as stored by 3Delight for Maya as attributes, they can also be edited in Maya's Attribute Editor as well. Note that the 3Delight Rendering Attributes not only defines rendering options such as image quality and type of output to produced, but also the information defining the scene elements to use for rendering.
3Delight Render Pass
All the Rendering Attributes are encapsulated in what we call a Render Pass. This offers the possibility to have multiple Render Passes. Render Passes add flexibility on top of the standard Maya layers.
3Delight Geometry Attributes
Some parameters that are specific to 3Delight are stored in The Geometry Attribute Node.
3Delight Light Attributes
3Delight for Maya supports all Maya light parameters and provides its own Light Attribute Nodes to set specific parameters. For example, the deep shadow map type is selected through the Light Attribute Node as explained in Deep Shadow Maps.
RenderMan Shader Nodes
It is possible to assign RenderMan shaders to scene elements (this will override any Hypershade material assignment). Assignment is done through the Assignment Panel or the The 3Delight Relationship Editor while the Attribute Editor is used to edit the shader parameters.
RIB Archives
3Delight for Maya can create and read RIB archives. This is done using the RIB Archive Nodes. This is a handy feature when efficient rendering of complex scenes is required.
The RenderMan Code Node
This advanced Hypershade node allows insertion of SL code (RenderMan Shading Language code) in a Hypershade network. See The RenderMan Code Node.