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14 Customizing Shake
Shake’s graphical interface can be highly customized. This
chapter covers how to create preference files, and
explains the different variables and settings that can be
modified by the user.
Setting Preferences and Customizing Shake
This chapter explains how to customize the appearance of Shake, macro interactivity,
and performance parameters. It also lists environment variables you can set to improve
Shake’s performance.
There are several other sections in the Shake documentation that cover similar
information:
• For information on creating Viewer scripts, see “Viewer Lookups, Viewer Scripts, and
the Viewer DOD” on page 61.
• For information on creating custom kernels for filters, see “Convolve” on page 865.
• For more information about creating macros, see Chapter 30, “Installing and Creating
Macros,” on page 905. For a tutorial on creating a macro, see Tutorial 8, “Working
With Macros,” in the Shake 4 Tutorials.
• For information on scripting, see Chapter 31, “Expressions and Scripting,” on
page 935.
Creating and Saving .h Preference Files
Unlike many applications that control user customizable settings with a preferences
window, Shake provides access to a wide variety of functionality using a system of
user-created preference files. This section discusses where to find the uneditable files
that contain Shake’s default functions and settings, and how to create and store your
own separate preference files, to overwrite these settings and customize Shake’s
functionality.