Visibility

The per-object visibility options in Redshift allow you to control if and how objects participate during the various stages of rendering.

By default, the Casts Caustic Photons option is Off. To render with caustics, you will need to turn this option on for any object that will cast caustic effects in your scene.

Override

Activate this option to apply the individual Visibility settings of this tag to the object.

The visibility settings are effective on the object that hosts the Redshift Object tag as well as any child objects.

General

The following examples show the effect of changing the Primary Ray Visible and Secondary Ray Visible options on the sphere.


Primary Ray Visible On, Secondary Ray Visible On	Primary Ray Visible Off, Secondary Ray Visible On. The sphere cannot be seen from the camera, but is visible in shadows, reflection, refraction and GI.	Primary Ray Visible On, Secondary Ray Visible Off. The sphere is invisible for all effects except camera rays and shadows. Notice the lack of GI on the sphere.

Primary Ray Visible

Controls whether the object is visible from the camera or not.

Secondary Ray Visible

Controls whether the object is visible from all other effects, including reflections, refractions and global illumination.

Casts Shadows

Determines whether an object will cast shadows or not.


Sphere has 'Casts Shadows' enabled.	'Casts Shadows' is disabled. Notice the missing shadow under the sphere.

Receives Shadows

Controls whether the object will receive shadows or not.

Self-Shadows

Controls whether the object can shadow itself or not (but can still shadow other objects).


Elephant has 'Self Shadows' enabled.	'Self Shadows' is disabled. Notice the missing shadows on the elephant.

Casts AO

Controls whether the object can cast ambient occlusion onto other objects or not.


Sphere has 'Casts AO' enabled	'Casts AO' is disabled. Notice the missing ambient occlusion under the sphere.

Reflection & Refraction

Visible in Reflections

Controls whether an object is visible in reflective objects.

Casts Reflections

Controls whether an object will shoot reflection rays. If the material assigned to the object has no reflections this parameter has no effect.


Sphere with 'Visible in Reflections' Off	Mirror with 'Casts Reflections' Off

Visible in Refractions

Controls whether an object is visible when seen through transparent objects.

Casts Refractions

Controls whether an object will shoot refraction rays. If the material assigned to the object has no transparency or refractions, this parameter has no effect.


Sphere with 'Visible in Refractions' Off	Glass plane with 'Casts Refractions' Off

Global Illumination

Visible to GI

Controls whether an object is seen by the Irradiance Cache, Irradiance Point Cloud or the Brute Force calculation.

Visible to Caustic Photons

Controls whether an object is seen by photons emitted by Caustic Photon Mapping.

Receives GI

Controls whether an object will receive any GI at all – including both photon- and non-photon-based GI. Turning 'Receives GI' off means the object will not receive any lighting from the Irradiance Cache, Brute Force, Irradiance Point Cloud or Caustic Photon Mapping.

Force Brute-Force GI

This means that, even if the user has selected Irradiance Cache for the primary GI engine, that object will still use Brute-force GI. This is useful when for scenes that work well with Irradiance Cache, but have a few highly detailed or 'noisy' objects like grass or trees, for which Brute Force GI is a better choice.

Casts Caustic Photons

Controls whether caustic photons will refract through refractive objects and/or be reflected by reflective objects.

Receives Caustic Photons

Controls whether the object will receive caustics created by other objects.