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 Attributes Panel: Object in Maxwell Studio. For the plugins, please consult their documentation.
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.
This option hides any polygons whose normals are pointing away from the camera.
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
These same options are available both in Studio and in the rest of the 3D platforms. Please consult your plugins specific documentation.
This option allows you to make an object invisible in the final image, but its presence affects all the objects around it (shadows, reflections, global illumination).
An interesting use of this option is to make invisible emitters, but maintaining the light they cast in the scene.
This option prevents the object from appearing in the reflections of other objects, or from being seen through transparent, refractive objects.
With this option turned on, the object will not affect the global illumination in the scene - it will not cast a shadow or affect color bleeding in the scene.
Z-clip 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.