Update All Views During Interaction

Causes all viewpoint views to update simultaneously each time you modify an element in the scene. When on, this feature reduces the speed at which the scene updates. When off, the view you are interacting with gets refresh priority and the refresh of the other viewport views will lag behind.

Enable View Frustum Culling for New Scenes

Activates View Frustum Culling by default, in new scenes. This improves the display speed by drawing only the objects within the camera’s field of view.

Sync Redraw to Display (v-sync)

Tries to turn the v-sync option for your display driver off (default) or on. Disabling v-sync improves playback performance, but can result in minor visual artifacts if the frame changes during a screen redraw.

This option is available on Windows systems only, and does not work with all display cards and drivers. If it is not available, your driver does not support the necessary extensions. You should assume that v-sync is on.

If this preference does not correspond with the information displayed when showing frame rates in the viewports, then your driver is overriding application settings. In your driver’s settings, you should set v-sync to “application controlled” (or equivalent).

Note that if Softimage detects an NVIDIA GeForce-based video card, the Sync Redraw to Display (v-sync) preference is ignored: Softimage will not attempt to switch the video card’s v-sync on or off regardless of the preference or environment settings.

If you are experiencing problems with other cards that you think may be related to vertical sync, you can set the XSI_NO_VSYNC environment variable. See Environment Variables.

Optimize Hardware View Clipping

When View Frustum Culling is activated, objects that fall entirely within the camera’s field of view are drawn with hardware clipping planes disabled.

Don’t Recompute Mesh Normals

Does not recompute the normals of polygon mesh objects when updating. This speeds up playback but may cause visual artifacts.

Advanced Hardware Particle Display

Activates hardware optimizations for displaying particles. Turn this off if you experience problems with particle display.

Enable View Headlight for New Scenes

When activated, new scenes have the Headlight, as configured in the Camera Display Options, activated by default.

Highlight Property Set Owners

Objects whose properties are currently displayed in open property editors are highlighted in the viewports.

Use Coarse Step By Default for Interaction and Playback

The UV coordinates of NURBS type objects are displayed in coarse mode (only one step is calculated and displayed between knots).

Enable On-screen Editing of Custom “DisplayInfo” Parameters

Allows on-screen editing of custom and proxy parameters displayed in 3D views (that is, when there is a custom parameter set whose name begins with “DisplayInfo”). When this option is on, you can:

• Click and drag on a parameter name to modify the value. Drag to the left to decrease the value, and drag to the right to increase it. Press Ctrl for coarse control, press Shift for fine control, or press Ctrl+Shift for ultra-fine control. Press Alt to extend beyond the range of the parameter’s slider in its property editor (if the slider range is smaller than its total range).

If the parameter that you click on is not marked, it becomes marked. If it is already marked, then all marked parameters are modified as you drag.

• Double-click on a numeric value to edit it using the keyboard. The current value is highlighted, so you can type in a new value. Only the parameter you click on is affected.

• Double-click on a Boolean value to toggle it. Only the parameter you click on is affected.

• Click on an animation icon to set or remove a key for the corresponding parameter.

• Right-click on an animation icon to open the animation context menu for the corresponding parameter.

The color of the animation icon indicates the following information:

• Gray: The parameter is not animated.

• Red: There is a key for the current value at the current frame.

• Yellow: The parameter is animated by an fcurve, and the current value has been modified but not keyed.

• Green: The parameter is animated by an fcurve, and the current value is the interpolated result between keys.

• Blue: The parameter is animated by something other than an fcurve (expression, constraint, mixer, etc.).

Point Size

Sets the display size of geometric points in pixels.

Font

Specifies a typeface to use when displaying parameters and values in 3D views (that is, when there is a custom parameter set whose name begins with “DisplayInfo”). Type the name of a font that is installed on your computer.

On Windows, you can use any installed font, including TrueType and OpentType (*.ttf).

On Linux, you require a corresponding .bdf file. Softimage looks for fonts in your $MWHOME/fonts directory.

Font Size

Specifies the size of type in points to use when displaying parameters and values in 3D views. This option is available only if you have set a non-default font above.

Scale Hardware Textures Up to Nearest Power of Two

When enabled, OGL textures whose resolutions are not “powers of two” in one or both dimensions, are scaled up, rather than down.

The resolution of OGL textures must be a “power of two” in both dimensions. For example, a 256x128 texture is OK, but a 250x120 texture must be scaled to the nearest power of two in order to display properly.

Maximum Hardware Texture Size for New Image Clips

Defines the default maximum resolution at which new image clips are displayed in shaderballs as well as in Textured and Textured Decal viewing modes. The parameter converts the input to a 2x-factor resolution, e.g.: 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64...

Size

Specifies the size of thumbnails displayed in various views (the render tree, for example. Choose Small, Medium, or Large.

Min Length in Pixels of Polynode Bisectors

Sets the minimum length of polynode bisectors in pixels.

Max Length in Pixels of Polynode Bisectors

Sets the maximum length of polynode bisectors in pixels.

Scale Factor w/r to Smallest Adjacent Edge

Sets the length of the polynode bisector as a fraction of the shorter of the two adjacent edges. For example, if this option is set to .2 and the shorter edge is 50 pixels long, then the bisector will be 10 pixels long as long as the minimum and maximum lengths are respected.

Pitch Angle in Degrees of Polynode Bisectors

Sets the angle in degrees by which the bisector sticks out from the plane of its two edges. This makes it easier to select a bisector when the polygon is almost perpendicular to the screen.

Display As Frames

Toggles between displaying time in the timeline as frame numbers or in timecode (hours:minutes:seconds:frames). This option is not available if the Display Format has been set to milliseconds.

Use Custom Display Format

Allows you to select a custom format from the Display Format list.

Display Format

Displays time in the timeline as milliseconds, SMPTE Film (24fps), SMPTE NTSC drop-frame or non-drop frame format, EBU PAL (25fps), or audio samples.

Render Regions

When enabled, render regions display the gamma correction specified by the Source option.

Render Pass and Preview

When enabled, render passes and render previews display the gamma correction specified by the Source option.

Shader Balls

When enabled, shaderballs display the gamma correction specified by the Source option.

UI Widgets

When enabled, color widgets display the gamma correction specified by the Source option.

The color controls allow you to toggle back and forth between the regular and gamma corrected display without affecting the global gamma correction preference setting.

Source

Select the source for the RGB values to be used for gamma correction:

• From Gamma Values: Performs the gamma correction using values set with the RGB Gamma Values sliders.

• From LUT File: Performs the gamma correction using values set with an on-disk LUT file.

Filename

Choose the LUT file you want to use to preform a display-only gamma correction. The Filename drop-down menu displays the names of all the available LUT files on your system.

Softimage scans the \Data\Preferences\Default\ColorManagement folder of the installation location and populates the LUT list with any supported LUT files it finds. You can drag and drop your LUT files into the ColorManagement folder (if the ColorManagement folder does not exist, you can create it at this location) and they will be made available from this drop-down menu the next time you start-up Softimage. This is also supported for workgroups.

The LUT file is defined solely by its file name (no path information is stored), so that you can easily export preferences across machines.

Softimage supports the following LUT file formats:

• .csp format - 1D & 3D LUTs - Rising Sun Research cineSpace and cineSync products.

• .look format - 3D LUT only - IRIDAS SpeedGrade products.

• .cube format - 3D LUT only - ARRI ARRICUBE color management system.

• .lut format - 1D LUT only - AutoDesk Flame and Flint products.

Softimage provides a few color profile presets based on a generic 1D LUT that you can use or modify for your own purposes. This LUT file format is very simple and it can be easily re-created using a spreadsheet tool. A one-to-one look up table provides a single value to get a single value, such as when you replace a specific color in one pixel with another color. Typically the LUT file contains a table for each RGB color channel.

If no LUT files are found then the menu is grayed out and “No LUT” is displayed.

Red

Applies the specified gamma correction value to the Red color channel.

Green

Applies the specified gamma correction value to the Green color channel.

Blue

Applies the specified gamma correction value to the Blue color channel.

Lock Sliders

When enabled, all of the gamma color channel sliders behave as a single slider, from which you can adjust all three values at once.