This option allows you to toggle the visibility of the camera framing regions in the 3D Viewport. Click the image below to view an animation.

Toggle to enable wireframe drawing in Item mode, giving a cleaner display to differentiate between Item and Component modes.

Note:  Setting this option overrides the settings in the Active Mesh and Inactive Mesh tabs. For more information, see Active Meshes and 3D Viewport Properties.

Selected items are drawn as a wireframe (the default) with a transparent fill color over the mesh.

The following options are available:

• Wireframe - The selected items in the scene are displayed as a wireframe with a transparent fill color over the mesh.

• Filled - The selected items in the scene are displayed with a transparent yellow mesh. Roll over an item in your scene to display the item in a transparent light blue mesh.

• None - The selected item in the scene is displayed in a fill color and the unselected items in the scene are drawn in wireframes.

You can choose from several viewport-specific GL background options for controlling what is seen in the background of the viewport.

• None - Displays no background, only the defined viewport color is visible.

• Gradient - Displays a gray gradient shading that is multiplied over the viewport color.

• Environment - Displays the settings as determined by the Environment Item of the Shader Tree, simulating the rendered output.

• Image - You can define a custom image for use as a viewport background. When this option is selected, a file requester opens where you can select or navigate to the appropriate image. For best results, image should be a spherical projection.

You can choose from several viewport-specific GL reflection options for controlling the display of reflective surfaces.

• None - Displays no reflection, ignoring surface material settings.

• Gradient - Displays a gray gradient shading on reflective surfaces.

• Environment - Displays the settings as determined by the Environment item of the Shader Tree, simulating the rendered output.

• Image - You can define a custom image for use as reflections (only applies to custom reflective surfaces, or Reflection viewport display mode. When this option is selected, a file requester opens, where you can select or navigate to the appropriate image. For best results, the image should be a spherical projection.

• Same as GL Environment - Reflection options are determined by the GL Background settings.

In the case of multiple cameras in a scene, where the viewport is set to Camera view type, this option determines which camera item controls the viewport. Selecting alternate cameras changes the viewport to that camera's point of view.

Note:  Navigating in the viewport while in this mode physically moves the camera in the scene.

To make viewport navigation easy, it is sometimes desirable to link or unlink grouped 3D viewports, so when changing the position, size and angle of the viewport view, associated viewports move in sync with the active viewport. These three toggles allow you to control the syncing of the view properties center, scale, and rotate.

Inverts the RGB values of the projected image.

When enabled, draws the projected image on top of the viewport, obscuring its contents. When set as such, changing the Transparency allows you to see the viewports contents.

Adjusts the contrast of the projected viewport image, modifying the visual difference between light and dark values in the image. Positive values increase the contrast, while negative values decrease it.

Adjusts the brightness of the projected viewport image. Positive values brighten or lighten the image, while negative values darken it.

In the Perspective view type, you can enable the Oscillate option. Then, using Alt+right-click , drag the cursor, moving the view. When you let go of the mouse button, Modo continues to bounce back and forth, oscillating over the previous mouse movement. This is useful when you want to view a model in motion.

You have several options for orbiting behavior when navigating the viewport. When trackball rotation is disabled, viewport rotations are limited to two axes. When enabled, the viewport can be rotated on multiple axes based on the mouse's viewport position, as if the viewport itself was a giant trackball. The options are:

• No - Disables trackball style rotation in favor of standard upright orbiting.

• Yes - Enables trackball rotation for the specific viewport.

• Default - Uses the preference setting available on Windows and Linux in System > Preferences > Input > Remapping > Viewport Rotation and on Mac OS in Menu > Preferences > Input > Remapping > Viewport Rotation.

Note:  Trackball rotation is disabled by default in the Preferences.

When enabled, animated items in the scene update continuously when dragging the Timeline, producing a smooth motion. When disabled, items only update when the mouse pauses, or isn't moving, providing slightly faster performance.

Toggles the visibility of the light item representations in the current viewport. Typically disabled for modeling views.

When Show Lights is enabled, disabling this control turns off illumination from all lights in the scene to improve viewport response times.

This is especially useful if you have multiple lights in the scene that you want to adjust. You can still see the light widgets in the viewport, but the illumination they provide is disabled so you can move the light positions quickly and easily.

Toggles the visibility of the camera item representations in the current viewport. Typically disabled for modeling views.

Toggles the visibility of the Work Plane in the current viewport. (keyboard shortcut is Num Pad *).

• Always - Set to always display the Work Plane. This is the default option.

• Active - Set to display the Work Plane when it has been active. For example, moved or rotated.

• Never - Set to never display the Work Plane.

Toggles the visibility of the ground plane grid at the 0 position of the up axis.

• Always - Set to always display the grid.

• Inactive Work Plane - Set the main grid to be drawn when the work plane is not active. This has the effect of there being only one grid drawn at a time. This is the default option.

• Never - Set to never display the grid.

Toggles the visibility of the main grid and Work Plane to be drawn faded.

Toggles the visibility of the main grid and Work Plane to be drawn with colored axes.

Toggles the visibility of selection highlighting.

When enabled, this option displays normals for any selected polygon(s), displayed as a small dashed line pointing outward from the center of the polygon. Normals represent the facing direction for polygons.

Toggles the visibility of the selection highlight overlay.

Toggles the visibility of fur material applied to your mesh.

Toggles the visibility of Displacement maps.

Toggles the visibility of the Tool HUD. Press Ctrl + Tab to toggle the HUD off and on.

Specifies what property form the Tool HUD uses. You can customize the property form in the Form Editor, available from the menu bar. Click System > Form Editor. In the editor, the available property forms are listed under Form HUD.

Specifies how the Tool HUD is displayed. The following options are available:

• fixed - Sets the Tool HUD to a fixed position.

• floating - Allows the Tool HUD to be moved around.

• Close - Transforms the Tool HUD into a moveable palette with a Close button.

Adds an even illumination globally to all diffuse surfaces in a scene. This is especially useful for simulating additional bounces of light.

Allows you to specify a color value for the global light added by the Ambient Intensity setting.

Note:  Ambient Intensity and Ambient Color are also available in the Render Items's Global Illumination settings. The Global Illumination settings are applied at render time, and override the viewport settings.

Toggles the visibility of Direct Light shadows in the viewport. Note that Point, Directional, and Spot Lights generate more accurate shadows than Area and Cylinder lights.

Increases or decreases the shadow quality displayed in the viewport. You can set the number of shadow buffer projections the Cascade Shadow Map system uses for the light source to view casting curved shadows on curved surfaces. The following options are available: off, x2, x3, and x4. The higher the value specified, the smoother the shadow edges are. By default, this option is set to x2.

Note:  The higher the level specified, the more memory and processing time are required. (Lower values render faster but produce less shadow detail.)

Sets the texture resolution used when depth projecting the shadows. The following options are available: Low, Mid, and High. By default, this option is set to High.

Sets whether the shadows are filtered. By default, this option is On. When working in a complex scene, turn this option off to improve performance in the 3D viewport.

Toggles all normal map visibility.

Toggles all bump map visibility.

Overrides the Shader Tree materials being used in the scene. This setting provides faster rendering performance results in the Advanced viewport when rendering a number of different types of materials. These options are also useful when working with a Unity Material or Unreal Material.

• Simple - Produces a fast, simple rendering in the Advanced Viewport. Note, this option does not support Image Based Lighting or shadows.

• Basic - Produces a rendering in the Advanced Viewport using simple traditional Shader model materials. Most basic Shader Tree materials are supported. For example, Diffuse and Specular materials. Unity Material, Unreal Material, Image Based Lighting, and shadows are also supported. In most cases, selecting this option produces faster results than selecting the Full option.

• Full - Produces a full rendering, using all of your specified materials, that is similar to the output of the Preview Viewport and Render Display. This option takes more time to render.

Controls how Shader Tree groups are handled in the 3D viewport:

• Flat - Ignores groups and produces a flattened Shader Tree.

• Full - All Shader Tree groups are rendered.

Sets the light sources that are used to illuminate the geometry.

• Default Viewport - Uses normal viewport lighting. This includes scene lights, Image Based Lighting, and the default Viewport Light.

• Scene - Uses only lights in the scene. This excludes the Viewport Light and Image Based Lighting.

• Environment - Uses only the Environment image for lighting.

• Scene + Environment - Combines both Scene and Environment lighting.

• Default + Environment - Combines both Default Viewport lighting, including scene lights, Image Based Lighting, and the default Viewport Light with Environment lighting. This is the default setting.

Selects the viewport background type:

• Default Viewport - Uses the default background.

• Environment - Draws the background as defined by the Environments settings in the Shader Tree. This allows you to show Environment detail that was previously only available in the Render Display.

Sets the option to remove wireframe lines or widgets from the viewport:

• (none) - Draw all lines and widgets.

• Render without wireframe - Removes wireframes but draw widgets, and overlay information.

• Render without wireframe and widgets - Removes wireframes, widgets and overlay information.

Controls the visibility of items in the viewport when set to Advanced. When set as the Render option, the Render visibility setting on each item determines viewport visibility, and when set to the Viewport option, an item's visibility is determined by its Items list visibility (as controlled by the eye column of the Items list).

Sets how the curvature shading is calculated when Curvature Display is set to Use Shader Tree or Viewport:

• Fast - uses a derivative calculation to produce faster, lower quality shading.

• Screen Space (Geometric) - uses a global screen space calculation based on the geometry to calculate shading, producing the curvature effect between each polygon, along each edge, making it easier to see how the geometry was constructed.

• Screen Space (Normals) - uses a global screen space calculation based on the geometry normals to calculate shading, which smooths the curvature over the whole surface making it easier to see the curvature effect for larger, smoother shapes.

Controls how curvature shading is displayed in the viewport:

• Use Shader Tree - use the Occlusion type selected in the Shader Tree to calculate curvature shading for each mesh. The example image shows Hard Light occlusion.

Note:  The Occlusion layer Type property must be set to Curvature to apply the selected occlusion type.

• Viewport - use the Viewport to calculate curvature shading equally on the entire scene.

• Off - no curvature shading is added.

Controls the intensity of curvature shading when Curvature Display is set to Use Shader Tree or Viewport.

Sets the mode of rendering screen-space Ambient Occlusion, an effect that darkens recessed areas of a surface, producing a look similar to global illumination light scattering. You have the following options:

• Off - The default option. Disables Ambient Occlusion in the Advanced viewport.

• Hybrid - An improved, more robust version of the original Ambient Occlusion effect. It works better on large scale scenes than the original effect.

Note:  Click a thumbnail below to see the full-size image.

Original (deprecated)	Hybrid

Note:  This effect is completely independent of the Ambient Occlusion Shader Tree layer and not representative of how it renders, but adds an additional visualization possibility to enhance the look of the GL viewport models.

In Hybrid mode, additional options become available to fine-tune the look of the Ambient Occlusion effect.

• Radius - Determines the size of the effect. A large radius can affect performance.

• Bias - Adjusts the shading falloff curve. Lower values darken the Ambient Occlusion, while higher values lighten the effect. This option is not used by Hybrid mode.

• Intensity - Controls the overall strength (darkness) of the Ambient Occlusion effect. The higher the Intensity value, the darker the result.

• Blur Radius - Applies a blur to soften the resulting Ambient Occlusion effect, producing a smoother overall result, but higher values, result in greater performance cost.

Determines the amount of subsampling of viewport drawing that smooths the jagged display of the Advanced viewport. The default is set to Off.

With Antialiasing enabled, as you increase the Multisampling value, the amount of jaggedness reduces. The default is 1.

Another way of producing anti-aliased images. It specifies the maximum number of frames used to produce the final image in the Advanced viewport. Specifying higher values results in anti-aliased images. When interacting with the viewport, it runs at full non-aliased frame rates, then improves the quality and aliasing over time when there's no interaction with the viewport. The default value is 1, which means the option is off.

Renders an anti-aliased model wireframe displayed in the 3D viewport. The following options are available:

• Off - No attempt is made to anti-alias the model wireframe rendering. This is always the fastest option.

• System - If the present drivers support it, the 3D (OpenGL) viewport smooth line drawing is used. This is fast but has limited support. For more information on supported hardware, see the Release Notes.

• Full - The 3D Viewport uses a special shader to render anti-aliased model wireframes. This is the slowest option but it provides the best visual quality.

Note:  The Line Antialiasing option is independent of the general Antialisaing option.

Note:  On macOS (especially ARM hardware) using the Full option can yield significantly lower performance.

Filters all material textures using the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) value. The Max level is different for all GPUs. When enabled, the GPUs hardware texture filters units to apply the best Anisotropic filtering the GPU can do. The default value is set to Off.

Defines the display of transparent surfaces. The following options are available:

• Off - Disables transparency drawing.

• Fast - Does simple depth sorted transparency.

• Correct - Does correct depth sorted transparency, producing a more accurate result. Use the Mode and Depth dropdowns to control how Correct Transparency is calculated.

Sets how Modo sorts layers of transparency to render the final image:

• Depth Peeling - uses the legacy Modo method to sort transparency. The results from Depth Peeling may not be as high quality as Full mode.

Note:  Depth Peeling is the only mode available on macOS, Shallow and Full are unsupported.

• Shallow - only sort the top number of layers specified by the Correct Transparency Depth control, resulting in faster rendering of transparency.

• Full - sort all layers of transparency, which produces the best result at a cost of processing time.

When Correct Transparency Mode is set to Shallow, sets the number of layers of transparency to sort.

Shows surface reflections as you would in the Render Display. The reflection can be adjusted by adjusting the material properties, namely Reflection Amount, Reflection Type, Blurry Reflection and Roughness. See Material for more details.

• Off - Disables reflections.

• Fast - Enables fast (non-blurry) reflections.

• Blurry - Enables full reflections with blur.

Note:  The frame rate will get worse with an increase in the number of reflected objects, especially if they are blurred.

The advanced viewport has the following options for controlling color processing.

• Off - Disables dithering, which may reveal banding in the image.

• Ordered - Introduces simple ordered dither to reduce banding caused by color gradients. This option is enabled by default.

• HDR - When using a HDR/XDR monitor, image intensity can go into High Dynamic Range.

Note:  The HDR option is currently only available on MacOS 10.15 or higher.

You can choose from the available view styles covered above: Wireframe, Solid, Shaded, Vertex Map, Texture, Shaded Texture, Default, Advanced, Gooch, Cel and Reflection Shading

Determines the style of geometry wireframe display. You can adjust the colors of the wireframe using the preference setting in Windows in System > Preferences > Display > Colors and on Mac OS in Menu > Preferences > Display > Colors. Once a color scheme is created in the Preferences and saved as a named preset, it must be applied to the active viewport with the menu bar command View > Viewport Color Scheme.

• None - No wireframe displayed. (/)

• Uniform - By default this is a white wireframe outline. (Shift+/)

• Colored - By default this is a black wireframe outline. (Ctrl+/)

Controls the opacity of the wireframe overlay display.

Specifies the color of the wireframe in the 3D viewport.

Defines which type of Vertex Map is displayed when in the Vertex Map viewport.

• Selection - Displays the most recent Vertex Map selection.

• Weight - Favors Weight Maps for display.

• Vertex Color - Favors vertex color maps for display.

This toggle overrides the material Smoothing setting, only changing how smoothing is displayed in the viewport, not the rendered output. When disabled, individual polygons shade flat, appearing faceted. When enabled, polygons shade according to the material Smoothing setting.

When enabled, selected Weight Maps are visible as overlays to the shaded elements in the 3D viewport in Default viewport display style. This includes the automatic weights associated with bones and deformers.

Toggles the visibility of the sculpting masks in the viewport when working with multi-resolution sculpting. When a masks visibility is disabled, the mask still affects the target unless the Enable Mask option is inactive. For more information, see Using Sculpting Masks.

Toggles visibility of the colors displayed for the geometry with signifying distorted areas. Enabling this option displays a color overlay on the geometry, fading toward red when polygons are distorted and smaller (relative to other polygons in the map) and fading toward blue when they are distorted and larger (relative to other polygons). Polygons that are the closest relative size to others in the map with the least distortion display a middle gray/green color.

Sets which color component of the selected RGBA map is drawn in the Vertex map mode. The following options are available:

• RGB

• Alpha

• Red

• Green

• Blue

Note:  The Shading > Shading Style must be set to Vertex Map to set the Vertex Map display.

This is a per-viewport override for the display size of selected vertices. When enabled, you can specify the actual display size with the Point Size option.

Determines the display size of selected vertices when the Independent Point Size option is enabled. Values are in screen pixels.

Allows you to set visibility in the selected 3D viewport. The following options are available:

• Always - Always show vertices.

• In Component Modes - Only show vertices in Component mode.

• In Vertex Mode - Only show vertices in Vertex Component mode.

• Never - Never show vertices.

Controls the thickness of edges on active meshes. Increasing the default value of 1.0 can help you see edges more easily at different zoom levels.

Controls the thickness of active curves. Increasing the default value of 1.0 can help you see curves more easily at different zoom levels.

Toggles the visibility of the Subdivision Surface Cage representation. This can be considered the original polygons that were smoothed.

Toggles the visibility of guide lines that draw between the subdivision limit surface and the cage geometry.

Toggles the visibility of the component index values display. Each number represents the particular component index. Visibility can be especially helpful when working with Geometry Constraints, where Constraints require specific index values for input.

Toggles the visibility of Weight Map value display. A numeric value representing the current vertex weight amount displays next to each selected vertex in the 3D viewport. See Working with Vertex Maps for Weight Map usage information.

Allows you to differentiate between background and foreground wireframes, so you can easily understand the topology you're working with. This option is especially useful for decluttering heavy wireframe models.

The following options are available:

Note:  Transparency overrides are not available in Wireframe mode. If you want to use transparency overrides on inactive meshes, make sure that their shading style is NOT set to Wireframe under 3D Viewport Properties > Inactive Meshes > Shading > Shading Style.
Transparency overrides are available in the Advanced viewport, as of Modo 14.1v1.

Specifies the color of front-facing polygons in Ghost or Xray mode.

Specifies the opacity value of front-facing polygons in Ghost mode.

Specifies the color of front-facing wireframes in Ghost or Xray mode.

Specifies the color value of back-facing polygons in Ghost or Xray mode.

Specifies the opacity value of back-facing polygons in Ghost or Xray mode.

Specifies the color of back-facing wireframes in Ghost or Xray mode.

Specifies the opacity value of the wireframe in Ghost or Xray mode.

When enabled, the visible front faces of the mesh are overlaid on top of everything else.

When enable, the front wireframe opacity is linked to the back wireframe opacity so that the two can be controlled together.

When enabled, this option overrides all settings of the Inactive Meshes options panel and all background item layers display as foreground elements.

You can choose from the available view styles covered above: Wireframe, Solid, Shaded, Vertex Map, Texture, Shaded Texture, Default, Advanced, Gooch, Cel and Reflection Shading.

Determines the style of geometry wireframe display. You can adjust the colors of the wireframe using the preference setting on Windows and Linux in System >Preferences > Display > Colors and on Mac OS in Menu >Preferences > Display > Colors. Once a color scheme is created in the preferences and saved as a named preset, it must be applied to the active viewport with the menu bar command View > Viewport Color Scheme.

• None - No wireframe displayed. (/)

• Uniform - By default this is a white wireframe outline. (Shift+/)

• Colored - By default this is a black wireframe outline. (Ctrl+/)

Controls the opacity of the wireframe overlay display.

Defines which color to display.

Defines which type of Vertex Map is displayed when in the Vertex Map viewport.

• Selection - Displays the most recent Vertex Map selection.

• Weight - Favors Weight Maps for display.

• Vertex Color - Favors vertex color maps for display.

This toggle overrides the material Smoothing setting, only changing how smoothing is displayed in the viewport, not the rendered output. When disabled, individual polygons shade flat, appearing faceted. When enabled, polygons shade according to the material Smoothing setting.

When enabled, selected Weight Maps are visible as overlays to the shaded elements in the 3D viewport in Default viewport display style. This includes the automatic weights associated to bones and deformers.

Toggles the visibility of the sculpting masks in the viewport when working with multi-resolution sculpting. When a masks visibility is disabled, the mask still affects the target unless the Enable Mask option is inactive. For more information, see Using Sculpting Masks.

Toggles visibility of UV boundaries in the 3D viewport. These display as thin purple lines overlaid on the surface, representing the outline of each UV island. The default color can be changed in the Color Preferences section.

Toggles visibility of Geometry boundaries, These display as a thin green line on any open edges of a surface. Especially useful in highlighting hidden surface discontinuities.

Toggles visibility of the colors displayed for the geometry with signifying distorted areas. Enabling this option displays a color overlay on the geometry, fading toward red when polygons are distorted and smaller (relative to other polygons in the map) and fading toward blue when they are distorted and larger (relative to other polygons). Polygons that are the closest relative size to others in the map with the least distortion display a middle gray/green color.

This is a per-viewport override for the display size of selected vertices. When enabled, you can specify the actual display size with the Point Size option.

Determines the display size of selected vertices when the Independent Point Size option is enabled. Values are in screen pixels.

Toggles the visibility of unselected vertices (selected vertices are always visible, unless Show Selection is disabled).

Controls the thickness of edges on inactive meshes. Increasing the default value of 1.0 can help you see edges more easily at different zoom levels.

Controls the thickness of inactive curves. Increasing the default value of 1.0 can help you see curves more easily at different zoom levels.

Toggles the visibility of the Subdivision Surface Cage representation. This can be considered the original polygons that were smoothed.

Toggles the visibility of guide lines that draw between the subdivision limit surface and the cage geometry.

Allows you to differentiate between background and foreground wireframes, so you can easily understand the topology you're working with. This option is especially useful for decluttering heavy wireframe models.

The following options are available:

Note:  Transparency overrides are not available in Wireframe mode. If you want to use transparency overrides on inactive meshes, make sure that their shading style is NOT set to Wireframe under 3D Viewport Properties > Inactive Meshes > Shading > Shading Style.
Transparency overrides are available in the Advanced viewport, as of Modo 14.1v1.

Specifies the color of front-facing polygons in Ghost or Xray mode.

Specifies the opacity value of front-facing polygons in Ghost mode.

Specifies the color of front-facing wireframes in Ghost or Xray mode.

Specifies the color value of back-facing polygons in Ghost or Xray mode.

Specifies the opacity value of back-facing polygons in Ghost or Xray mode.

Specifies the color of back-facing wireframes in Ghost or Xray mode.

Specifies the opacity value of the wireframe in Ghost or Xray mode.

When enabled, the visible front faces of the mesh are overlaid on top of everything else.

When enable, the front wireframe opacity is linked to the back wireframe opacity so that the two can be controlled together.