FIRE can be used as a viewport in the main Maya window or as a floating window. To change a main window panel to use FIRE, go to Panels -> Maxwell, select a camera and then check Interactive Rendering in the same menu. To open a floating window use the FIRE button in the Maxwell shelf. The floating window is the recommended approach, since it provides more options and frees up space for the model panels, attribute editor, channels box etc. in the main window.
The Camera menu in the floating window allows you to select the camera to render. The Viewport menu has the following options:
- Save Image: save the contents of the FIRE viewport to disk.
- Stop: stop the running render.
- Start: if FIRE is stopped, restarts the render. If any changes were made in the scene while FIRE was stopped, they are exported now.
- Full Restart: clears the FIRE scene, exports everything again and restarts rendering.
- Freeze State: stops exporting scene changes to FIRE. The render continues uninterrupted with the current scene state, ignoring further changes. When the box is unchecked, the changes are exported and rendering restarts.
- Allow Selection: clicking on objects in the FIRE viewport selects them. This requires the OpenGL viewport to be rendered behind the FIRE image, so it can negatively impact performance on heavy scenes.
- Show HUD: display UI elements such as camera gate, axis triad etc. over the rendered image. These elements are not saved in the file produced by the Save Image menu command.
- Engine Settings: brings up a window which allows you to configure FIRE options. The settings are the same as those in the Plugin Settings window.