Info
3Delight For Maya is our plug-in for Maya users wishing to create highquality work that is sometimes difficult to achieve using Maya'sinternal renderer. The plug-in was designed to be easy to use for Mayaartists as well as provide the necessary power and flexibility for themore demanding production environments.Userscan rapidely experience the power of the 3Delight renderer in theirprojects thanks to HyperShade support, complete geometry support anddirect rendering to Maya's render view. Advanced features includemulti-pass work-flow, RIB output, MEL RenderMan® binding, multipleoutput variables, photon mapping, etc ...
This tool has already awealth of production experience and has been used with success inproductions such as X-Men 3, Chronicles of Narnia and Fantasic Four.
Rendering Features
Two Render Modes
Bothdirect rendering in Maya (including rendering into Maya's render view)and RIB export are supported. Direct rendering is useful in normallighting and rendering work while RIB export can be used for renderfarm rendering. RIBs exported by 3Delight For Maya are optimized forsize and can be written in compressed binary form.
HyperShade and RenderMan Shaders Support
BothRenderMan shaders and Maya's HyperShade nodes can be assigned toobjects. HyperShade nodes are automatically converted intohuman-readable SL code and compiled for rendering. New HyperShade nodescan easily be added by providing 3Delight For Maya with their SL code.
Motion Blur and Depth of Field
Multi-Segmentmotion blur and realistic camera shutter simulation contribute to highquality rendered images. Compared to other rendering software, motionblur in 3Delight For Maya is fast. Depth of field is fully supportedand simulates a realistic camera bokeh.
High QualityAnti-AliasingEdge anti-aliasing, motion blur and depth of field qualityare all controlled using very simple and predictable controls. "PixelSamples", "Pixel Filter" and "Filter Width" are the most commonparameters one needs to know. Contrary to other rendering packages,such as ray tracers, increasing pixel samples for higher qualityanti-aliasing does not affect performance significantly.
Geometric Displacements
Displacementsare efficiently rendered to sub-pixel accuracy. Hypershade displacementshaders as well as RenderMan shaders can be assigned to geometry.
ShadowsBothray tracing and shadow maps can be used to render shadows. Shadow mapscan be rendered in "deep" mode for realistic shadows in hair and fur.Additionally, 3Delight For Maya can automatically generate "cube shadowmaps" for point lights. Contrary to other rendering packages, cubeshadow maps are not stored as six separate shadow maps but in onespecial shadow map.
Ray Tracing
Reflections and refractions are accurately rendered.
Global Illumination
Photon maps, caustics, final gathering and image based lighting are supported.
Subsurface Scattering
Automatic subsurface scattering can be enabled on a per-object basis and delivers impressive results, fast.
Workflow
3DelightFor Maya offers a multi-pass rendering workflow that is suitable forproduction work. "Render Passes" can be used to render differentcomponents of a scene (as in "Render Layers" or to render differentlighting characteristics of a scene (such as diffuse, specular orambient occlusion). In short, a render pass can define the followingparameters (please refer to the User's Manual for a thoroughdescription):
Camera and quality options
Render mode. Either direct render or RIB export.
Objectsto render. Maya sets can be used to define groups of objects to renderin a given pass. The default is to render all objects in the scene.
Lightsources to render. Maya sets can be used to define the light sourcesthat are used. The default is to use all light sources.
Clippingplanes to use. A 3Delight For Maya clipping plane can cut space in anydesired direction to clip away geometry. Clipping is performed atsub-pixel accuracy and can be used, for example, to cut an object intwo.Additionally, a given render pass can use a certain "shadercollection." This means that objects can have different shadersassigned to them, depending on the pass being rendered. The User'sManual provides more information about this unique feature. Note thatone could simply use one render pass for the more traditional one layerrendering.
Supported Geometry
Maya Hair and Paint Effects
Rendered using 3Delight's efficient `RiNuCurves' primitive.
Polygons
Alltypes of polygons, including those with holes, are supported.Additionally, polygonal geometry can be tagged as a subdivision surfaceand rendered as such.
NURBS (Maya surfaces)All NURB surfaces aresupported. Trim curves on surfaces are also fully supported andrendered to sub-pixel accuracy. All surfaces are renderedsmooth.Hierarchical Subdivision SurfacesFully supported, including bothcreasing and partial creasing on edges and vertices as well asper-level UV sets. As always, all hierarchical subdivisions arerendered smooth and to sub-pixel accuracy.
Particles
"Point","blobby", "sphere" and "patch" particles are supported. "Point"particles are rendered using 3Delight's efficient lightweight particleprimitive.
Curves.Maya curves can be tagged as renderable on a perobject basis and rendered using 3Delight's RiNuCurvesprimitive.Additionally, UV sets, texture reference objects and normals(if any) are correctly assigned to all primitives.
Configurability and Flexibility
Aswith all serious production tools, 3Delight For Maya has been designedwith flexibility in mind. In fact, no other rendering plug-in on themarket achieves the same balance between integration andconfigurability.
We implemented most of the RenderMan interface inMEL, which means that you can call RenderMan commands in your MELscripts. Other packages mainly provide "RIB boxing" capability.
3DelightFor Maya was written mostly using the MEL RenderMan interface whichmeans that one can modify it at will. Only core functionalities havebeen programmed in C++ for performance reasons.
Import and Export
Output Formats
3DelightFor Maya can save rendered images in many file formats, including:TIFF, IFF, OpenEXR, cineon, bmp, sgi, softimage and PSD.
Input Formats
Maya'stextures used in HyperShade shaders are automatically converted to3Delight ".tdl" textures. When using RenderMan shaders, 3Delight'stexture converter (tdlmake) can be used to convert the most commonimages formats to ".tdl" textures.
HDR Images tdlmake can converthigh dynamic range probes (both normal and "twofish" probes) imagesinto environment maps suitable for image based lighting.
3Delight 8.5 and 3Delight for Maya 4.5 released
Thisrelease includes support for RSL 2.0 (shader objects and co-shaders)and further ray-tracing optimizations that should give significantperformance gains when rendering displacements and motion-blur.3Delight for Maya includes a new relationship editor to quickly exploreand assign shaders and attributes as well as new "edge rounding"features to easily bevel edges on polygonal geometry.
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