Advanced Dicing Control

The dicing control properties are not available by default. You must use the properties interface to add them to the render output driver, camera, or object. See properties for more information. The dicing properties are under mantra9.0/Dicing. Some of these options may be available by default in a future build of Houdini 9.

The dicing properties have similar controls for scanline dicing (for the micropolygon scanline renderer) and ray sampling (for the raytracer).

Binary Split

When spliting primitives, turning on this option ensures that primitives are split into grids containing a power of 2 micro-polygons. This minimizes patch cracks.

Dicing flatness

Normally the dicer tries to represent flat surfaces with fewer polygons. Turn this option down for more accurate (less optimized) flat surfaces.

Scanline measuring

Non-raster measuring

The new dicing algorithm, which can use the Z-coordinate to influence the dicing, by the amount specified in the Z-importance parameter (see below).

This is the default, with Z-importance set to 0, which is essentially the same as setting this to Raster space measuring (the old algorithm).

Raster space measuring

The old algorithm, which only uses the XY grid of the output image pixel grid to control the dicing.

Uniform measuring

Dices everything equally, independent of screen space.

This may be useful on a per-object basis if you have an object very close to the camera, and you want to dice it the same as everything else in the image.

Z-Importance

Ratio of Z-size to raster size. Turn this up for better detail on displaced surfaces viewed edge-on by the camera.

Measure Scale/Ray Measure Scale

For uniform dicing, the measure scale determines the micropolygon size. Larger values produce smaller micropolygons.

Ray Measuring/Ray Z-Importance

Same as Scanline measuring, but for raytracing. The default for Z importance is 1 for raytracing instead of 0.

Ray predicing

This optimization caches raytracing information to speed up raytracing of diced surfaces (for example subdivision surfaces) at the cost of using more memory.

Ray Shading Quality Multiplier

The shading quality multiplier when raytracing. See Shading Quality Multiplier below.

Ray Shading Quality

The shading quality when raytracing. See Shading Quality below.

Shading Quality Multiplier

This setting is a global multiplier on all shading qualities in the scene. Increasing this value will increase the shading quality for all objects.

Shading Quality

The shading quality for scanline rendering. A higher quality will generate smaller micro-polygons meaning more shading and sampling will occur, but the quality will be higher.