Objects visibility

Owned by dario (Unlicensed)
Last updated: 06 Dec, 2012 by Mihai Iliuta (Unlicensed)Version comment
3 min read

During the render process, you usually want your objects to appear in the final image and affect the lighting of the other objects around. 

But in some circumstances, it is useful to hide an object not to appear in the final image, to avoid it affecting its surrounding, or both. Maxwell offers you the following options for each object in 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 on the rest 3D platforms. The location of these options in your 3D platform may vary depending on each 3D platform interface arrangement.

 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.