Hardware and global rendering setup

Render Node Settings

You can create new Render nodes here

• TIP - There can be several render nodes in a scene but only one can be active at a time. Render Nodes are used to set up effect and features, quality, render sets, render passes, debugging and many more.

Activating render settings node from Render Nodes Manager

Single click to select a node, double click to activate it.

Creating new render settings node

Select 'Node -> New' from Render Nodes Manager menu, a list with presets will appear, select preset you want to create your new node from. New node will be selected (not activated), you can rename it or                change parameters using Maya interface and then activate it if you want.

Render settings node presets

When you create a render settings node it is added to scene and saved with other scene data. When you open that scene on another computer with FurryBall installed all your render settings nodes are there.

But what if you want to use your render settings node in another scene? There are two similar (not the same) solutions, you can simply use Maya node preset feature (see Maya documentation) but this saves        the preset only for your Maya installation. To save a render settings node preset to a file which you can distribute to any other Maya installation with FurryBall simply select 'Preset -> Save As Preset' and type        a        name for it. Preset file will be saved to a 'resources\renderNodePresets' subdirectory where you installed FurryBall. To delete a preset delete the file physically from that directory or select 'Preset ->                Delete Preset'.

Advanced tip

Don't be afraid to use all the features and possibilities of the render settings nodes system. Create several render settings nodes (or presets) for every scene you work with. Create render settings node set exactly for a specific part of your production pipeline (models creating, texturing, animations etc.) or for every output rendering pass.

Render settings node can be activated also using MEL command

       furryBallSetRenderNode #nodeName#

Why not to create preview and normal render settings nodes with low and high render quality settings and bind two commands to a key shortcut. One that activates preview mode and the other one to activate normal quality mode, now you can switch between them using a simple key shortcut.

Raytracing Settings

Acc. Structure Transform

Default and much faster is used TrBVH builder which uses GPU for building structure. When you have LOW graphics memory, select some of CPU variant to prevent crashing FurryBall.

FurryBall supports two GPU builders (TrBVH and LBVH) and two CPU builders (BVH and Median BVH). For very specific cases FurryBall allows to select also No Acceleration.

BVH, Median BVH and LBVH structures supports also refitting, it means, that only changes are updated, instead of rebuilding whole structure. It can be useful for some cases because of build speedup, however it can cause also render slowdown, if refitted structure will become bad.

(This is just for building internally structures - rendering is ALWAYS made on GPU)

Specially Hair systems can cause HUGE memory peeks and cause crash.

FurryBall support selecting one acceleration structure type for all transform nodes and one type for geometries. It can be helpful for some cases, however it can cause rendering slowdown or fails in some variations.

Changing acceleration structure is recommended only for advanced users, which know what doing.

Acc. Structure Geometry

FurryBall support selecting one acceleration structure type for all transform nodes and one type for geometries. It can be helpful for some cases, however it can cause rendering slowdown or fails in some variations.

Changing acceleration structure is recommended only for advanced users, which know what doing.

Max Ray Length

Maximum distance that any ray can achieve. For example: two objects can not reflect or illuminate each other, if distance between them is bigger then radius attribute.

Max Direct and Indirect Intensity

Maximal intensity value for each Primary or Direct rays in global illumination. It can be helpful if it in scene objects with large intensity. This intensity is distributed in scene and can cause very noisy results, which is very badly reduced by adding rays count. White dots problem

• TIP - Default value is 10.000 - If you like prevent white dost, you can decrease this number to 3 for example.
• Your Direct lights (Specular for example) will be clamped to this value - it will have effect on Postproduction, or some Glow or Glare effects, because your higher values will be clamped.
• When you use HDRI lighting with high light values, you have to increase this value. Otherwise your light will be clamped to this value.

Noise Seed

Seed value of noise pattern used for raytracing.

Viewport Render Settings

Maya viewport only

Progressive

Enables/disables progressive rendering.

Progressive Quality

Quality of progressive rendering. If value is lower than 0, than pixel reduction is used (ie. first frame is rendered in lower resolution). Value greater than 0 specifies, that additional rays will be computed in first frame of progressive. This allow you to preview in better quality than only with one ray.

Tiles

Default is NONE.

Spiral, Lines, Random - types of tiles rendering (save memory and help keep Maya response during rendering)

NONE - Will be faster, but slower Maya response and more memory hungry

• TIP - For High GPUs (Titan, Quadro K6000...), use NONE tiles. Viewport render will be about 30% faster.

Interactive Post-processes

Allows interactively change post-production effect without re-rendering. (It's slow render time little bit).

Interactive Playblast

Allows interactively move in Maya timeline or doing fast playblasts, however in progressive quality. If checkbox is disabled, moving in Maya timeline or running playblast is in final frame quality.

IPR Render Settings

Progressive

Enables/disables progressive rendering.

Progressive Quality

Quality of progressive rendering. If value is lower than 0, than pixel reduction is used (ie. first frame is rendered in lower resolution). Value greater than 0 specifies, that additional rays will be computed in first frame of progressive. This allow you to preview in better quality than only with one ray.

Tiles

Spiral, Lines, Random - types of tiles rendering (save memory and help keep Maya response during rendering)

NONE - Will be faster, but slower Maya response and more memory hungry

• TIP - For High GPUs (Titan, Quadro K6000...), you can use NONE tiles. Viewport render will be about 30% faster.

Interactive Post-processes

Allows interactively change post-production effect without re-rendering. (It's slow render time little bit).

Final Render Settings

File output and final render only

Progressive

Enables/disables progressive rendering.

• TIP -  much faster use NON progressive for final render.

Progressive Quality

Quality of progressive rendering. If value is lower than 0, than pixel reduction is used (ie. first frame is rendered in lower resolution). Value greater than 0 specifies, that additional rays will be computed in first frame of progressive. This allow you to preview in better quality than only with one ray.

Tiles

Spiral, Lines, Random - types of tiles rendering (save memory and help keep Maya response during rendering)

NONE - Can be faster, but slow Maya response and more memory hungry

Other Settings

Log Level

FurryBall prints all important messages and errors to the 'Output window'. This attribute affects the verbosity of the messages logged.

Show Info

Show frames per second or render time and some other renderer status information if enabled. - HUD

Show UI

UI elements enable - like Manipulators, etc..

Log frame progress

Show frame progress for status information about rendered frame in the script and output window.

Enable progress bar

Progress bar enable during rendering.