Alias offers high quality hardware and software rendering. Both rendering methods share a material system.
Hardware Shade mode can be used for real-time model evaluation, live visual presentations, or snapshots for presentations.
Hardware Shade provides fast visual feedback (real time or close to real time results depending on model size, functionality selected, etc.) and supports advanced technologies such as Anti-Aliasing, Bump and Specular Mapping, Cube Map and Environment Reflections, Ground Plane Shadows, Reflections, Ambient Occlusion, and Image Based Lighting.
File
ExportCurrent Window enables you to save Hardware Shade images. For live presentations, hide the Alias interface using LayoutsFull Screen; use Bookmarks (WindowsBookmark Lister) to move between previously defined views.
Hardware Shade can be chosen from the WindowDisplay menu. The Render menu holds all the other render menus (software renderers, the material manager, and so on).
Software Render offers raycasting and raytracing technologies. Raytracing technology provides more realistic results because of advanced features such as refraction, object reflections, and soft shadows. Both software render raycasting and raytracing technologies support and share Hardware Shade, Ambient Occlusion, and Image Based Lighting (IBL is not available in all products).
The Multi-lister offers tools to manage lights, materials, and the environment. It provides you with the ability to set colors, textures, lighting effects like glows, and use image-based lighting for reflections in your scene.
The materials library available in the Visualize Control Panel is a good starting point to understand or construct materials.
You can choose and assign materials using either the Multi-lister or the Control Panel.
All shader parameters can be edited in the Multi-lister; the most common parameters can also be edited in the Control Panel.
Double-click a shader in either the Multi-lister or the Control Panel to open the shader editor window. Single-click a shader in the Control Panel to display the common shading parameters in the Control Panel.
Image quality (tessellation, anti-aliasing), image file format and resolution (for batch render), and other parameters, are all set in the Render Globals window (RenderGlobals).