Panel menu: Shading

This Shading menu displays above the scene view, or above each view panel in a layout with multiple scene views (like the Four View layout).

The Shading menu provides a number of ways to look at your scene. The quality can range from a simple wireframe display to a smooth- shaded view.

Wireframe

Draws edges for polygon meshes and isoparametric curves for surfaces. This is the default shading quality.

Smooth Shade All

Displays all surfaces, meshes, and particles as smooth-shaded objects.

Note:

Shader plug-ins and textures plug-ins are supported when you use Hardware Texturing. When you use Smooth Shade All mode, only the attributes of the following specific names are used: diffuse, hardwareColor, color, transparency, incandescence, specularColor, shininess.

Smooth Shade Selected Items

Displays selected items as smooth-shaded objects.

Flat Shade All

Displays all surfaces and meshes as flat-shaded objects.

Flat Shade Selected Items

Displays selected items as flat-shaded objects.

Bounding Box

Displays objects as boxes that represent their bounding volumes. Bounding boxes speed up Maya operations and can make a significant difference for complex models.

The bounding box encompasses the hulls as well as the actual geometry. As a result, the bounding box may have dimensions larger than those of the geometry.

Note:

To see bounding box coordinates, open the Attribute Editor, click the shape node tab, and open the Object Display section. It shows the read-only minimum and maximum world space boundary coordinates of a surface along the X, Y, and Z axes.

Points

Shows objects as groupings of individual points.

Use default material

Displays the default shading material on objects when displaying in shaded mode regardless of the assigned shading material.

Wireframe on Shaded

Superimposes a wireframe display on all shaded objects in a view.

X-Ray

Displays all shaded objects as semi-transparent. This can be useful for seeing hidden parts of a model.

X-Ray Joints

Displays skeleton joints over top of other shaded objects to aid joint selection.

X-Ray Active Components

Displays active components over top of other shaded objects. This shaded mode is useful when you want to ensure you don’t accidentally select unwanted components. Applies only to polygon objects when in component mode.

Object Transparency Sorting

Transparent objects are sorted and drawn from furthest to closest in distance. This option provides faster results but may not render complex transparent objects correctly.

Polygon Transparency Sorting

Each object's polygons are sorted and drawn from furthest to closest in distance from the viewer. This option provides more accurate transparency representation but may take longer to process.

Interactive Shading

Controls the display of objects during interactive modes (such as transformations, camera navigation, and playbacks). At the same time the normal display can be in some sort of shaded mode. For example, the normal display can be smooth-shaded while the interactive display is bounding box. Select Shading > Interactive Shading > to set the Interactive Shading options.

Color Index Mode

On Linux only, lets you manipulate a wireframe object in a complex scene more quickly (for example, if you are using a full-color image plane while working in wireframe mode).

Backface Culling

For objects displayed in smooth shade or flat shade mode, makes the object’s back face transparent which helps speed the display or manipulation of objects.

Smooth Wireframe

Displays smooth wireframed objects in Maya’s 3D views, including the Hardware Render Buffer and the 3D Paint Effects view.

Note:

Does not work in 2D views, including the UV Texture Editor.

Hardware Texturing

Displays hardware textured rendered results in the scene view, as if they were being displayed in an external viewer. Select Shading > Hardware Texturing > to set the Hardware Texturing options.

Hardware Fog

Simulates hardware fog effects achievable in programs outside of Maya. Displays how a spotlight's fog is distributed before you render. Used for preview purposes, Hardware Fog only displays in the perspective view.

In Viewport 2.0, when you select Shading > Hardware Fog > , the Hardware Renderer 2.0 Settings window appears and enables you to adjust the fog settings. Select Shading > Hardware Fog > to set the Hardware fog options.

Depth of Field

When using Viewport 2.0, you can enable or disable depth of field per viewport. To see the depth of field effect in the viewport, you must first enable Depth of Field in the camera Attribute Editor. See View the depth of field effect in Viewport 2.0 and Adjust depth of field.

Apply Current to All

Applies the current 3D view's shading style to all objects in the scene.