[renderer]

Specifies which rendering engine to use when outputting your scene:

mental ray: renders the scene using the mental ray renderer, according to the settings defined in the mental ray Render Options Property Editor.

Hardware Renderer: renders the scene using a hardware renderer specified in the Hardware Render Options Property Editor.

Track Selection

Constrains the render region to the current selection so that it follows the selected object throughout its animation. If the selected object changes size, the render region is recomputed to fit around it. If you select another object, the render region tracks the new selection.

Auto Refresh

Toggles on and off the automatic refresh of the render region.

When on, the render region automatically renders every change you make to the elements in your scene.

When auto refresh is off (no check mark appears next to the command), choose the Refresh command to render any changes you make to your scene. Also, the render region’s outline becomes red instead of yellow.

Display Mode

Specifies what color channels to display in the render region. Choose any one of the following:

• Alpha-blended RGB displays the RGB channels overlaid over the scene using the alpha channel.

• RGB Only displays the RGB channels.

• Alpha displays the alpha channel of the scene in the render region. This is useful if you want to quickly check the accuracy of a particularly complex alpha channel.

• Red shows only the red channel.

• Green shows only the green channel.

• Blue shows only the blue channel.

When Region Closes

Deletes all data pushed to mental ray, as well as all data that mental ray creates, whenever the render region is closed.

After Rendering a Pass

Deletes all data pushed to mental ray, as well as all data that mental ray creates, after each pass is rendered.

After Finishing a Preview

Deletes all data pushed to mental ray, as well as all data that mental ray creates, after each preview finishes rendering.

Management Type

Load in Memory: For editing the image clip and storing all clip changes in memory. When rendered, the image is sent to each slave.

Use from Disk: References the image clip (source) from disk, thus not considering any changes made from the FX tab. When rendered, the images are sent to the render slaves.

Broadcast: Also references the image clip from disk. When rendered, the image’s path is sent to the render slaves.

Default Image Source

Specifies the location in the database of your default texture image. When you first create a texture space, this image appears on the element by default.

You can specify separate paths for Windows and UNIX systems. This is useful when you want to share the same preferences file between several Linux and Windows machines.

You have the option of specifying the path in the text box or in a browser (accessed by pressing the button to the right of the boxes).

Automatically Convert Images to .map Files

When activated, all of the image clips that are used in your scene, and meet the Minimum Size requirement, are converted to .map files at render time.

The auto-generated .map files are stored in a subdirectory (named mr_map) of the directory where the original image sources are stored. The .map files are used for rendering only, while the original image clips are used to display the textures within XSI.

You can control whether the auto-generated .map files are used at render time by setting the Automatic Map Conversion options on the Optimization page of the mental ray Render Options Property Editor or the Render Region Options Property Editor.

Minimum size

Specifies the minimum resolution necessary to convert an image to .map format.

Images whose resolution in either axis is greater than or equal to this value are automatically converted. Images whose resolution in both axes is less than this value are not converted.

This helps you avoid converting images that are small enough that memory mapping them does not affect rendering speed.

Reload Externally Modified Clips on Focus

Checks whether image files have changed on disk and reloads them when the mouse pointer enters a window.

When Local Materials Overlap

Specifies the default behavior when you apply a local material to a cluster (or selection of polygons) that overlaps one or more clusters that already have local materials.

• Prompt user before proceeding displays a dialog box that prompt you to choose one of the options listed below.

• Remove the overlap from the selection applies the local material to all parts of the selection except for the area of overlap, leaving any existing material(s).

• Remove the overlap from the existing cluster(s) applies the local material to the entire selection and removes any existing local material(s) from the area of overlap.

• Ignore (allow overlaps) leaves all existing materials on the area of overlap. The clusters’ internal display order determines which material is displayed at render time.

Generate Automatically

When activated, proxy images and directories are automatically generated in accordance with the Generation Behavior and Max Proxy Level settings. This guarantees that all images in the scene use proxies and that all proxies are up to date (meaning they reflect changes made to the original image).

When deactivated, you must generate image proxies yourself and place them in the correct directory structure. This is useful when you want to modify your image proxies, perhaps by adding text or changing the color depth.

Generation Behavior

Specifies whether or not image proxies and their directories should be generated for remote images files.

Always generate proxies: image proxies and their directories are generated for all images used in the scene, regardless of their location.

Generate only locally: proxies are only generated for images stored on the local machine.

Max Proxy Level

Image proxies are generated at every scaling level up to and including this one. Thus a setting of 4:1 produces 2:1 and 4:1 scale proxies, but not 8:1 or 16:1 scale proxies.

Min Proxy Size

Proxy images below this size are not created, even if the Max Proxy Level setting specifies that they should be.

For example, in the case of a 256x256 image, where the Max Proxy Level is set to 16:1, but the Min Proxy Size is set to 128 pixels, Only the 2:1 scale proxy (128x128) is generated.

Generate Thumbnail

When activated, thumbnails are generated along with image proxies.

Verbose

When activated, all operations affecting image proxy use and generation are logged to the command history.