Attribute Overview

Attributes

RenderMan has many unique qualities, from advanced features to rendering knobs and buttons. These unique qualities can be controlled using RenderMan specific attributes, and RenderMan for Maya provides numerous strategies for controlling these attributes. There are several levels of granularity that attributes may be controlled: job, display, and object.

Job Attributes - Define global settings for an entire scene.
Display Attributes - Define settings for individual render passes.
Object-Level Attributes - Allow attributes to be set on a per-object basis.

Priorities

Job attributes affect the scene by default, display attributes override job attributes, and object-level attributes override display attributes. In is important to note that before object-level attributes can be effective, they must first be set explicitly. RenderMan for Maya does not populate the Maya scene with unneeded RenderMan attributes.

For example, the quality control attribute, Shading Rate, is defined in the Render Globals. That job attribute setting, however, could be overridden during the execution of a shadow pass by adjusting the Shading Rate for that shadow pass, using the RenderMan Passes tab. Taking it one step further, Shading Rate attribute could be set on a particular object, by adding an object-level attribute to the object, which would override both the Render Globals and Passes settings. Here is a list of the priorities (object wins over display, display wins over job):

1) Object Attributes:
         Object-level Attributes, which are attached directly to specific Maya surfaces, lights, and shaders
        Shared Attribute Nodes, which are attached to specialty RenderMan specific nodes
2) Display Attributes:
        Render Pass
3) Job Attributes:
        Render Globals
        RenderManforMaya.ini

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