Visualizers and channel switches
The inspector's Render ▸ View section holds one group of exclusive visualizers and several groups of independent switches. Every control here changes what the viewport draws for the current session and none of them modifies the file.
Visualize
The visualizers are mutually exclusive. Selecting one replaces normal shading; selecting it again returns to shaded rendering.
| Visualizer | What it shows | What a problem looks like |
|---|---|---|
| UV Checker | A checker pattern mapped through the texture coordinates | The checker should stay square and evenly sized. Stretching or sudden size changes mean distorted or inconsistent UVs |
| UV Coordinates | Texture coordinates drawn as colour, red for U and green for V | Black means the primitive has no UVs |
| Unlit Base Color | Base colour with all lighting removed | — |
| Geometry Normals | Vertex normals, with normal maps ignored | Hard facets where you expect smooth shading mean broken or missing normals |
| Shading Normals | The final normals after normal mapping, which is exactly what lighting uses | — |
| Normal Map | The raw sampled normal texture | Uniform flat blue means no normal map is bound |
| Roughness Texture | The sampled roughness channel as greyscale | Solid white means no roughness texture is bound |
| Metallic Texture | The sampled metallic channel as greyscale | Solid black means no metallic texture is bound |
| Tangents | Tangent directions | Magenta marks primitives without tangents. Generate them from Resources ▸ Meshes |
| Bitangents | Bitangent directions | Flipped patches usually mean mirrored UVs with the wrong tangent handedness |
| Vertex Colors | COLOR_0 vertex data | Solid white means the mesh carries no vertex colours |
| Face Orientation | Blue for front faces, red for back faces | Red on the outside means flipped winding |
UV Checker and UV Coordinates add a UV Set control for choosing between UV0 and UV1, and UV Checker adds a Checker Scale slider.
Two further rows combine with any of the above:
- Wireframe overlays triangle edges on whatever else is being drawn, with an adjustable line width.
- Display Normal Vectors draws a short line from each authored vertex normal.
Material channels
Each switch removes one material contribution, which shows what that contribution was doing.
| Switch | Off means |
|---|---|
| Base Color | Every surface renders with a neutral white base |
| Normal Maps | Shading uses geometry normals only |
| Metallic | Every surface is treated as dielectric |
| Roughness | A uniform default roughness is used |
| Occlusion | Baked ambient occlusion is ignored |
| Emissive | Emissive surfaces stop glowing |
| Alpha | Everything renders opaque |
Lighting
| Switch | Effect |
|---|---|
| Image Diffuse | The diffuse contribution from the environment image |
| Image Specular | Specular reflections from the environment image |
| Model Lights (glTF) or Imported Lights (FBX) | Lights that came from the file, with Point Lights and Spot Lights as sub-switches |
glTF extensions
For a glTF or GLB model, one switch per supported material extension: Clearcoat, Sheen, Specular, Transmission, Volume, Iridescence, Anisotropy, and Diffuse Transmission.
USD shading
For a USD stage, the switches describe what the viewer does with the surfaces the stage authored. A row appears only when the stage has something for it to act on.
| Control | Effect |
|---|---|
| Render Context | Authored shades each material through the output the stage declares, including MaterialX. Universal approximates each material from its UsdPreviewSurface inputs, which is what a viewer without MaterialX support renders |
| Scene Materials | Off draws every surface with the viewer's default surface, ignoring material bindings |
| Display Color | primvars:displayColor and displayOpacity, which tint the surface even with scene materials off |
| Displacement | Off draws the undisplaced surface |
| Volumes | UsdVol fields |
The visualizers, the material channel switches, and unlit rendering have no effect on a material shaded through the mtlx render context, because a MaterialX-generated shader does not read the values that drive them. Switching Render Context to Universal puts the model back on the UsdPreviewSurface approximation, where all of them apply.
USD lighting
| Control | Effect |
|---|---|
| Scene Lights | Lights authored on the stage. Off leaves only the viewer's key light and environment. Sub-switches appear per light type present: Distant, Sphere, Rect, Disk, Cylinder, and Mesh |
| Light Linking | collection:lightLink. Off lights everything from every light |
| Shadow Opinions | UsdLuxShadowAPI, covering shadow enable, colour, distance, falloff, and shadow linking |
| Light Shaping | UsdLuxShapingAPI focus and IES profile. The cone itself is unaffected |
| Photometry | inputs:exposure, colorTemperature, and normalize. Off leaves raw intensity and colour |