Viewport settings

This page of the application settings dialog contains options related to the interactive viewports of the OVITO.

Camera

Coordinate system orientation

OVITO can restrict the viewport camera rotation such that the selected Cartesian coordinate axis always points upward. Default: z-axis.

Restrict camera rotation to keep the major axis pointing upward

This option constrains the camera’s orientation to prevent the camera from turning upside down.

Viewport background

This option changes between a dark (default) and a white viewport background.

3D graphics

Transparency rendering method

This option affects the rendering of semi-transparent objects when they occlude other objects or overlap with each other. Both available rendering methods represent different approximations of how a true rendition of semi-transparent objects would look like - which is not achievable in real-time visualization using OpenGL.

Back-to-front ordered rendering (default) gives correct results if there is only one kind of semi-transparent object in the scene, e.g. just particles, but likely fails to render a mixture of different semi-transparent objects correctly, e.g. semi-transparent particles combined with semi-transparent surface meshes.

Weighted Blended Order-Independent Transparency is an alternative method more suitable for overlapping semi-transparent objects of different kinds. But it delivers only a rough approximation of translucency.