Preview Viewport

Set the Preview render mode to Render or Bake.

For more details on Bake mode, see Preview Bake Mode.

Select the Preview display types. The following options are available:

• Scene Preview - Renders the active scene, based on the settings of the Shader Tree. When used as such, it also works as an interactive view of any changes made to the scene, updating as the changes are made.

• Sphere, Plane, and Preset Sphere - These options are useful for adjusting settings of individual materials in the Shader Tree, providing a way to see adjustments made interactively away from the surface the material might be applied to. The top-most Shader Tree layer always takes precedence in this mode. The three primitive options use the current scene environment and lighting.

Set which camera to use for creating the preview.

Set the colorspace of the monitor.

Note:   Unless there is a specific need, you should just leave this setting on the default sRGB setting.

For more information, see Color Management.

Select a quick Preview optimizer to choose between full and fast shading.

• Shading: Full - At each update, Modo evaluates the entire Shader Tree.

• Shading: Fast - Modo only evaluates the associated surface that was changed in the Shader Tree, which in many cases can really speed up preview.

With Convergence enabled, Preview checks that the image has converged to the minimum requirement (meaning the quality is good enough) before rendering the next frame. You can specify the convergence value here. Use this option to analyze your rendering based on the primary render output, not on whatever output you might have selected in the Shader Tree. This reduces the risk of you changing a render setting based on an output that is less computationally intensive than the final render output.

Enable or disable full resolution for the preview. When enabled, the Preview window renders at the resolution defined by the Render item Frame settings, regardless of the window size. When disabled, the render resolution is defined by the actual window itself.

Allows you to toggle the visibility of a selected layer's contribution to a scene, visualized as a semi-transparent overlay, by enabling that option. Once enabled, it displays the current texture as an overlay on top of the render, visualizing the raw value unaffected by things like Blending Mode, Opacity, or shading.

For more information, see Usage.

Heat Map displays the diagnostic values for progressive rendering. The following options are available:

• Number of Samples - Indicates the number of samples per pixel so that you can see how much work is needed in various parts of the image to clean the noise. This is a useful information for shading in general as you can see which parts of the image are most expensive evaluation wise.

• Convergence - Indicates the converged pixels, those that are identical to the same pixel evaluated in a previous pass. Converged pixels show as blue, other (non-converged) pixels are red when they are still very noisy and set color when they get close to the converged state.

For information about Progressive Rendering Options, see Render Item: Settings.

When enabled, the Preview window renders all the visible Render Output Items from the Shader Tree simultaneously, allowing you to switch between the various layers (using the Effect menu) while the scene is rendering. Selecting between the different outputs does not trigger a preview refresh, though picking any of the other alternate Effect types does.

The Effect of the Render Output layer can be changed to a variety of options for different purposes. The following options are available:

• Shading - Displays the evaluated results of all visible layers of the Shader Tree.

• Alpha Output - Calculates the opacity of the objects based on their material settings to determine an alpha (transparency) value. With this setting, an environment does not contribute to the alpha channel, so when the final image is viewed with an application that supports alpha channels, only the rendered geometry is visible.

For more information, see Basic Render Outputs.

• Final Output - Represents all the settings of the Shader Tree, leveraging all visible material and texture layers as well as shaders and the render item settings.

For more information, see Final Color.

Shading Effect - Select an effect to apply to the Preview viewport.

For more information on each of the shading effects, search the Online Help for a specified effect.

Set Preview to automatically update.

Preview can be useful to see a fully-rendered view of geometry, as it's created and tweaked. Each time the cursor is released on a modeling action, such as a bevel, the geometry cache is updated to reflect the change. This causes a new, full evaluation of the scene by the Preview window. By disabling the Automatic Update, you can go into a manual mode where preview resets the geometry cache only when the Reset Render option is invoked, or the preview itself is paused and then re-activated.

Enable multi-threading in the Preview viewport.

Modo intelligently uses available CPU cores, interactively adjusting the number, based on the current needs of the system. This helps to keep the system interactive, while still keeping the preview fast.

For information about Render Threads, see Rendering Preferences.

Enable multi-threading in the Preview viewport to render the maximum number of threads.

When enabled, uses all CPU cores, same as a full render would. This option maximizes preview speed but it can also result in sluggish performance when working outside of the Preview window. This is best to enable when the extended refinement passes option is selected and the system is not used for other purposes for a while.

Set the Preview viewport to update under cursor movement.

When enabled, Modo concentrates the Preview window evaluations to the area under the cursor when it's moving, allowing you to control what areas update first in any given preview. When the cursor is not moving or not over the Preview viewport, the standard random evaluation pattern is used, evenly spreading the CPU calculations across the image.

Display viewport controls.

For more information about viewport controls, see 3D (OpenGL) Viewport.

Display the Preview status bar.

Allows you to toggle tool visibility in the Preview viewport. When the option is enabled, you are able to see tool handles directly in the viewport, which can be used to transform objects interactively. When disabled, tool handles are invisible and you aren't able to modify items interactively.

Select whether to evaluate the direct light source shadows. These are lights such as Point and Spot Lights. When disabled, shadows are not evaluated in the Preview window, providing a speed boost dependent on the number of lights in the scene and their contribution. When enabled, all active direct light shadows are evaluated, as defined by each light's Shadow settings.

For more information about shadow options, see Shader.

Toggle Global Illumination to diffuse shading due to Indirect Illumination, therefore allowing you to view or hide all bounced light on the items in your scene.

Note:  Indirect illumination includes light that has either bounced from other surfaces or has come from the environment but not the light that has come directly from a light source (Direct Illumination).

For more information about Global Illumination, see Render Item: Global Illumination.

Toggle Reflections to view or hide all reflections between objects and the environment in your scene.

Note:  Reflections don't necessarily involve the environment. For example, the camera might be in a fully enclosed room.

For information about Reflection options, see Effect - Texture Item.

Toggle Refractions to view transparent surfaces as opaque in your scene.

For information about Refraction Roughness, see Effect - Texture Item.

Toggle Displacements to view or hide the effect of all displacement maps in the scene.

For more information about Displacements, see Effect - Texture Item.

When enabled, automatically halves the associated value for Displacements, providing a faster preview evaluation.

For more information about Displacements, see Effect - Texture Item.

Toggle Fur in the Preview viewport.

For more information, see Fur Material.

Enable to lower the quality of Fur in the Preview viewport. When enabled, Modo automatically halves the associated value for Fur, providing a faster preview evaluation.

For more information, see Fur Material.

Toggle Volumetrics to view or hide volumetric items as well as volumetric lights.

For more information, see Volume Render Outputs.

Toggle Motion Blur in the Preview viewport. The motion blur effect is calculated by taking time samples both forwards and backwards from the current frame and blending them together for the final blurred result.

For more information about setting Motion Vector outputs for Motion Blur, see Render Outputs.

Note:  Procedural meshes, created in the Mesh Operations list, support Motion Blur but there is a limitation. Elements can only be blurred if a similar element exists on both shutter open and shutter close.

Toggle Render Proxy in Preview to completely remove one or more selected Mesh Item layers within a scene, offloading them to an external file that isn't loaded again until render time.

For more information, see Render Proxy.

Render only selected items in your scene in Preview.

When enabled, only items that are selected in the Item List are evaluated in the Preview viewport. When disabled, all items set to render are evaluated. You can set Render in the item's Properties panel.

For information about selecting items in your scene, see Items List.

Loads any previously-saved progressive render states, and allows the continuation of the render when loaded.

Tip:  Preview saves its full progressive render state when Auto-Save completes a save. You can load the previous render state at a later time.

For information about Progressive Rendering Options, see Render Item: Settings.

Saves the current state of the progressive render to disk for further evaluation at a later time.

Warning:  Files may be quite large depending on the scene.

Tip:  Preview saves its full progressive render state when Auto-Save completes a save. You can load the previous render state at a later time.

Save the current state of the Preview window image to a variety of image formats.

Save all Preview layers as a layered image.

When enabled, you can simultaneously save all outputs in their current state into a single layered file in either .psd or .exr format. Each layer is named after the render output it represents.