User Manual

Table Of Contents
NOTE: The shadows shown in the 3D viewer are always hard edged. Soft shadows are
available for output to the rest of your composition in the software renderer of the
Renderer3D node.
Transparency in 3D Viewers
Image planes and 3D objects are obscured by other objects in a scene depending on the
X, Y, and Z position coordinates of each object in 3D space. The default method used to
determine which polygons are hidden and which are shown based on these coordinates is
called Z-buffering.
Z-buffering is extremely fast but not always accurate when dealing with multiple transparent
layers in a scene. Fortunately, there is another option for more complex 3D scenes with
transparency: Sorted. The Sorted method can be significantly slower in some scenes but will
provide more accurate results no matter how many layers of transparency happen to be
in a scene.
The default behavior in the viewer is to use Z-buffering, but if your scene requires the
Sorted method, you can easily change this.
To choose a Sorted method of 3D compositing:
Right-click anywhere within the 3D Viewer and choose one of the options in the Transparency
submenu of the contextual menu:
Quick Sort: Reorders the polygons in the scene serially, from back to front,
to produce a reasonably accurate rendering of transparency.
Full Sort: Renders every polygon in Z order to produce the most accurate
rendering of transparency.
Grid
The 3D Viewer displays a grid that’s used to provide a plane of reference in the 3D scene. By
default, the grid is 24 x 24 units in size, centered on the origin at (0,0,0), and subdivided into
large squares of 2 units with small squares of 0.25 units each. These defaults can be altered in
the 3D View panel of the Fusion Settings window, available from the Fusion menu.
To toggle the grid on and off:
Right-click anywhere within the 3D Viewer and choose 3D Options > Grid from the
contextual menu.
The default grid of the 3D Viewer grid with its origin at x = 0, y = 0 and z = 0.
Chapter – 58 Using Viewers 1151