Meshing

Contains controls for the level of detail and the smoothness of the rendering mesh.

Visible Surfaces Only

If on, only surfaces that are visible in the selected view are meshed, which includes surfaces that are visible through reflection or refraction. As additional views are rendered (using the Display current solution option), surfaces that have already been meshed can be rendered directly, and those that have not are meshed as needed. Meshing only the visible portion of a scene can provide significant savings, especially when the solution is recomputed many times.

Smoothness

Lets you control how much the particle hit points are “smoothed” or “blurred” across a surface. For a given set of hit points, the value for Smoothness affects the image as follows:

Smaller values — produce sharper shadows, but may also display more “noise” in the image if the value is set too small.
Larger values — produce smoother images, but may display blurry shadows if the value is set too large.

Values may be entered in the text field. Recommended values from 1 to 5 also may be input via the Smoothness slider (default is 3). Values outside this range also may be keyed in via the text field. Values below 1 will take significantly longer to process and will use significantly more memory.

Mesh Detail

(Visible only when Show Advanced Settings is on.)

Lets you control the resolution of the rendering mesh. Values (from 1 through 5) may be entered in the text field. Recommended values from 1 to 2 also may be input via the Mesh Detail slider. In general, this value should be set at the default value of 2.0. Increasing this value will generate more mesh points, which will take longer but may produce more detail. Decreasing the value will generate fewer mesh points, which will reduce processing time but may show less detail.

Minimum Mesh Spacing

(Visible only when Show Advanced Settings is on.)

If on, this setting sets the minimum size of a rendering mesh. The size of the rendering mesh defines the amount of feature detail, such as shadows and highlights, that will be visible in a particle traced solution. Setting this to an appropriate value can reduce processing time, and disk space required.

This value, which is specified in master units, should be set to the width of the smallest feature that should be visible in a solution. The appropriate value to use is, of course, dependent on your design and how you intend to render it. Where close up detail is required, a smaller value is needed to produce a finer mesh. For more distant images, a larger value may be used with little or no noticeable degradation in the image quality, but a noticeable reduction in processing time.