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68 Chapter 17: Rendering
Left: A sim p le box with no subdivision
MiddleLeft:Theboxfacesaresubdivided
Middle R ight: The box faces are subdivided with a smaller
Meshing Size
Right: The box faces are subdivided with Adaptive
Subdivision
Mesh Settings g roup
Adaptive Subdivision using the default mesh and light
settings
Ma x M esh S ize—The size of the largest faces
after adaptive subdiv ision. Default=36” for
imperial units and 100cm for metric units.
WhenUseAdaptiveSubdivisionisturnedoff,Max
Mesh Size sets the size of the radiosity mesh in
world units.
MinMeshSize—Faces are not divided smaller
than the minimum mesh size. Default=3” for
imperial units and 10cm for metric units.
Contrast Threshold—Faces that have vertex
illuminations that differ by more than the Contrast
Threshold settings are subdivided. Default=75.0.
Initial Mesh Size—When improving the face
shape, faces that are smaller t han the Initial
Mesh Size are not subdivided. The threshold for
deciding whether a face is poorly shaped a lso gets
largerasthefacesizeisclosertotheInitialMesh
Size. Default=12” for imperial units and 30cm for
metric units.
Light Settings grou p
Shoot Direct Lights—When adaptive
subdivision or shoot direct lights is on, the
direct lighting on all of the objects in the scene
is calculated analytically, based on the following
switches. Lighting is analytically computed
w ithout modif ying the object’s mesh which
produces lighting that is less noisy and more
pleasingtotheeye. Thisswitchisimplicitly
enabled when using adaptive subdivision since it
is a requirement. Default=on.
This switch is available when the Use Adaptive
Subdivision switch is turned off.
Adaptive Subdivision with light settings turned off
Note: Lighting from lights that are not included
while shooting direct light are calculated using
random sampling. These lights also are not able to
affecttheadaptivesubdivisionofobjects.
Include Point Lights in Subdivision—Controls
whether p oint lights are used when sho oting direct
lights. Ifthisswitchisoff,thenpointlightsare