Raytracer Controls Rollout

Enable Raytracing—Turns the raytracer on or off. Default=on.

Even with raytracing off, Raytrace material and Raytrace map still reflect and refract the environment, including both the environment map for the scene, and the environment map assigned to the Raytrace material.

Raytrace Atmospherics—Turns the raytracing of atmospheric effects on or off. Atmospheric effects include fire, fog, volume light, and so on. Default=on.

Enable Self Reflect/Refract—Turns self reflection/refraction on or off. Default=on.

Can an object reflect itself? For example, a teapot's body reflects the teapot's handle, but a sphere will never reflect itself. If you don't need this effect, you can improve render time by turning off this toggle.

Tip: If you have a transparent object such as glass, and have self reflect/refract turned on, you don't have to make the object 2-sided. The raytracer sees back faces when exiting refractive objects.

Reflect/Refract Material IDs—When on, the material reflects effects assigned to material IDs in the renderer's G-buffer on or off. Default=on.

By default, Raytrace material and Raytrace map reflect effects assigned to a material's ID, so that G-buffer effects are not lost. For example, if a raytraced object reflects a lamp made to glow with the Video Post Glow filter (Lens Effects Glow), the reflection glows as well.

These two check boxes turn raytracing of reflections or refractions on or off for this material. If you are using the Raytrace material to create only reflections or refractions, turn off the one you aren't using to improve rendering time.

Raytrace Reflections—Turns raytracing of reflective objects on or off. Default=on.

Raytrace Refractions—Turns raytracing of transparent objects on or off. Default=on.

Local Exclude—Displays the local Exclude/Include dialog.

An object that is excluded locally is excluded from this material only.

Tip: Using exclusion lists is one of the best and simplest ways to speed up the raytracer.

Bump Map Effect—Adjusts the effect of bump maps on raytraced reflections and refractions. Default=1.0.

Reflect—Dims reflections to black at this distance. Default=100.0.

Refract—Dims refractions to black at this distance. Default=100.0.

Note: The toggles for Reflect Falloff and Refract Falloff aren't animatable.

Controls in this group let you override the global antialiasing settings for raytraced maps and materials. They are unavailable if antialiasing is turned off globally. To turn on antialiasing globally, choose Rendering > Raytrace Globals to display the Global Raytracer Settings dialog.

On—When on, uses antialiasing. Default=unavailable unless global antialiasing is turned on; on if global antialiasing is turned on.

Drop-down list—Chooses which antialiasing settings to use. There are three alternatives:

Use Global Antialiasing Settings—(The default.) Uses the global antialiasing settings.

Fast Adaptive Antialiaser—Uses the Fast Adaptive antialiaser, regardless of the global setting.

Multiresolution Adaptive Antialiaser—Uses the Multiresolution Adaptive antialiaser, regardless of the global setting.

...—The button with the ellipsis to the right of the drop-down list displays another dialog to let you set antialiasing controls locally. The dialog displayed depends on which alternative you chose in the drop-down list, as follows:

Use Global Antialiasing Settings—Clicking ... displays the Global Raytracer Settings dialog.

Fast Adaptive Antialiaser—Clicking ... displays the Fast Adaptive Antialiaser dialog.

Multiresolution Adaptive Antialiaser—Clicking ... displays the Multiresolution Adaptive Antialiaser dialog.

When you change settings for an antialiaser locally, you don't affect the global settings for that antialiaser.