The Drawing property group only appears when nvidia_iray is the selected DrawStyle. The properties that reside in this group customize how the scene is drawn, using the NVIDIA Iray engine, as objects are manipulated. Additional property groups will be hidden or revealed, depending on the value that the Draw Mode property is set to.

The four Draw Modes are:

• photoreal
• interactive
• Blend Photoreal to Render Settings
• Blend Interactive to Render Settings

The Inactive Viewport Delay property provides the option to delay when inactive viewports update, which can shorten the update time of the active viewport, no matter which drawstyle is selected in the inactive viewport(s). Setting the Inactive Viewport Delay option to On places the other viewport updates on a “timer,” instructing them to wait a predefined amount of time before they begin to render. When Inactive Viewport Delay is set to Off, all viewports will start rendering at the same time.

The Response Threshold property sets the amount of time (in milliseconds) between when a change is made to the scene and when the scene starts to render again. The range extends from 8 milliseconds to 5000 milliseconds.

The Manipulation Resolution property provides the ability to increase the rate of visual feedback by temporarily lowering the quality of the rendered image during manipulation. This lowering of quality is accomplished by reducing the size of the rendered image and then scaling it to fit the original size. Since there are fewer pixels to render, the engine waits to render the finer details until the mouse is released. With this property, choose to divide the number of pixels rendered during manipulation by 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, or 1/16. For example, if the 1/4 option is selected, the Manipulation Resolution property reduces the number of pixels rendered by one-fourth and the resulting image is then scaled up, causing each pixel to be re-sampled to 4 times its rendered size, which results in the pixelated appearance. When the mouse is released, the size of the rendered image reverts to the original size, and the image provides enough pixels to capture the finer details.

The Draw Node Avatars property works like “helpers” in the sense that they show where imaginary objects are in the scene, like where a spotlight is positioned within the scene. When this option is enabled, these avatars are only drawn in the viewport and do not appear in the final render. Toggle the Draw Node Avatars property On to see the avatars or Off to exclude them.