During the render process, you usually want your objects to appear in the final image and affect the lighting of the other objects around. In some cases however you might want to control the objects visibility without changing its material settings, or hide it to the camera but still have it affect the scene - which is a very useful thing especially for emitter geometry. The following object properties are found in the Object Parameters panel in Maxwell Studio. For the plugins, please consult their documentation.
Opacity
This object parameter lets you control the objects overall opacity, with a 0-100% range. It can be very useful for illustrative renders - for example to show individual gears inside a watch, while still showing a hint of the cover. If you are using a plugin, this value can also be animated to create interesting reveal animations.
Hidden from...
In some circumstances, it is useful to have an object not appear in the final image, or to avoid it affecting its surrounding, or both. Maxwell offers you the following options for an object in the scene:
- Hidden from Camera
- Hidden from Reflections/Refractions
- Hidden from Global Illumination
- Hidden from Z-clip Planes
The object visibility options in Studio
These same options are available both in Studio and in the rest of the 3D platforms. Please consult your plugins specific documentation.
Hidden from Camera
This option allow you to hide an object not to appear in the final image, but its presence affects all the objects around it (shadows, reflections, global illumination).
This object (left) disappears when it is hidden from camera (right), but its presence continues affecting the whole scene
An interesting use of this option is to hide emitters to appear in the render, but maintaining the light they cast in the scene.
Hidden emitter
Hidden from Reflections/Refractions
This option hides your object to be seen in the reflective and transparent objects.
This object (left) is visible in the reflective and through the transparent objects. Instead, you can use this option to avoid an object appearing in the reflections and refractions of the surrounding objects (right)
Hidden from Global Illumination
This option allows you to skip this option from the Global Illumination calculations. This way, you can avoid an object to cast shadows and affect other objects with its color bleeding.
Enabling this option (right) you can force an object not to cast shadows nor affect other objects with its color bleeding
Hidden to Z-clip Planes
Z-clips Planes define near and far distance boundaries outside of which the objects will not be considered by the render calculations. Please see the Z-clip planes page for more details.
This option is useful when you want to clip your scene with a near and far plane to avoid unnecessary calculations, except for certain particular objects that you do not want to be affected by the Z-Clip planes.