XGen Output Settings

Operation

Specifies what XGen does with generated primitives.

Render

Renders the primitives using the renderer specified by the Maya Render Settings window and XGen mental ray Settings. This is the default setting.

Create XPD File

Specifies that primitives render to a XPD cache file. An XPD cache file contains information about the geometry, location, and attribute values of each primitive in the Description on a per-patch basis. The cache files are named using the geometry name. Use this option to create file versions of pre-computed and baked primitives.

Create Geometry

Lets you generate Maya-based mesh objects from spline primitives. When you select Create Geometry, the Output Settings displays the options for converting primitives to polygon meshes. These settings are the same as the Convert XGen Primitives to Polygons Options. See Convert Primitives to Polygon Options, See Also Convert XGen hair and fur to Maya geometry.

Create Guides

Specifies that the current primitives render as guides using the values set in the Generator Attributes. When rendering with this option, a new set of guides is created at the generated locations.

Create MEL File

Saves a MEL file containing a script which creates all the primitives in this Description as Maya geometry. Use this option as a way of converting large numbers of instanced XGen primitives to editable native Maya geometry.

The transform values of the archives are exported with the converted geometry. When you import the MEL file into a Maya scene, all of the objects appear in the same locations as in the XGen Description.

Create Particle File

Select this to bake out primitives to PDA or PDB particle database files.

Use this to if you want to save the primitives as points that are not bound to the original mesh surface. You can then import them into a Maya scene. The particle database file includes a number of shading parameters with each primitive. This lets you create a new shading network that is similar to the primitives' original shading.

Create Point File

Saves the generated primitive locations as points in a XUV point file.

If you want to create a point for each guide, set Operation to Create Guides. This generates a single primitive for each guide and therefore results in a single point location for each guide being rendered out.

Percent

Controls the number of primitives generated as a percentage of the Description's density. For example, setting this value to 50 when the Operation is set to Render, results in rendering of 50 percent of the total primitive density.

Renderer

Specifies the renderer to use for the Description.

Renderer-specific settings can appear for supported renderers. For example, when you select mental ray from the list, render settings appear in mental ray sections of the Preview/Output tab.

Primitive Bound

Sets the padding added to the bounding box of XGen surfaces to account for space occupied by primitives. To prevent primitives from being clipped when rendering, click Auto Set to set this value automatically.

Auto Set

Automatically calculates and sets the Primitive Bound. Click before rendering if the size of primitives has changed.

Only primitives in the view

Render primitives in the camera view (frustum). This only affects the final render, and not the preview.

View Margin

Control how far a primitive can be outside the view and still be included in the rendering. Use this with Only primitives in the view.

Save Folder

Specifies the location of files generated when Operation is set to Create XPD File, Create MEL File, Create Particle File, or Create Point File .

Geometry Type

Specific to Create Geometry. The type of geometry object you want to generate.

Create Geo to generate the polygon object.

Specific to Create Geometry. Click this to generate the polygon objects based on the specified conversions settings. See Convert Primitives to Polygon Options.

Replace Existing Guides

Specific to Create Guides. When on, XGen replaces the guides in the XPD file with the new guides that are created.

Apply Modifier

Specific to Create Guides. Bakes the effect of modifiers into the guides that are created.

Export as Instances

(for Create MEL Operation only) When on, Maya uses geometry instancing when you import the MEL file into a scene. Use this option when creating MEL files from Descriptions with a large number of archive objects or high resolution archive objects.

When off, each instance of an archive object is loaded in the scene multiple times.

Mask

(for Create Particle File Operation only) Attach a map to this attribute to control which primitives to save. Primitives generated in masked areas (black) are not saved.