Viewport Options

Viewport Options: This menu is accessed by right clicking in the top left corner of any viewport.

Full Screen Mode: Enables the current viewport to be displayed full screen without any toolbars or menus for playing animations or showing scenes for presentations. To quit fullscreen mode simply hit the esc key. You cannot move around or perform any functions in fullscreen mode.

Full Screen Resolutions: This contains a list of the available resolutions for Full Screen Mode. The default is 640 x 480. For recording to an offline video system or VCR the resolution should be set at 800 x 600 or 640 x 480.You can also adjust the color depth 8, 16, 32 bit color.

Change View: Allows you to change the current viewport to another view. Choose to view the Top, Front, Left, Right, Bottom, or Back in orthographic mode. Perspective view allows freedom of movement in all directions. You can also look through any object by selecting object or through any camera by selecting the Camera number as well as any Light by selecting the light number.

Viewport Setup:

Releasing on this option brings up a window in which you can select how you would like your viewports positioned.

Fullscreen Render States: This option lets you enable or disable VSync. Disabling VSync improves the number of FPS (frames per second), but it is recommended that your monitor have a refresh rate over 75 Hz in order to disable this option.

Fullscreen Color Depths: This option lets you choose a color depth from 16, 24, or 32, bit color.

Direct3D Driver: This menu lets you choose what kind of acceleration you want to use. You can use either Direct3D Hal (Hardware Acceleration Layer), Ramp emulation, RGB emulation or MMX emulation. MerlinVR 1.0 has been optimized for Direct3D Hal.

Render States:

Z Buffer Depth: This is a technique for performing "hidden surface removal" - the act of drawing objects so that items which are "behind" others aren't shown. The method is to track the distance of each on-screen object from the "camera", so that they are drawn in the proper order of distant objects first, close objects last. You can adjust the precision of the Zbuffer from 16, 24 and 32 bit precision. Depending on the 3D accelerator that you own, changing this option might or might not diminish performance.

Texture Mode: You can choose among these options to apply a specific type of texture filtering sceme. Nearest would give you a more pixelated image, linear would smooth out textures.

Fill Mode: You can choose either, Solid, Wireframe, or Point cloud. Choosing solid would render everything in the scene in a solid form. Wireframe would only output the wire structure of the objects in the scene. Poind cloud would show you the points

Lighting: Disabling lighting will remove the shading effect on any object in the scene.

Dither: Creating a new color by blending several colors which are already available.

 

Render Detail Level: Choosing a value lower than 100% will increase speed, and decrease the quality of your scene. If you have a low end 3D accelerator, you could try this option to reach better performance.