Share your custom viewport modes here

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

I think that it would be nice if there is a dedicated topic where Rhino users share their custom viewport modes, so that others could download and use them in their program.

It’s worth mentioning that the “Rhino Options > Advanced > Rhino.Options.OpenGL.SkylightShadowResolutionScaleDynamic” option makes a huge difference in those viewports that use GI shadows, so I strongly recommend to set the value to 1 to enhance the real-time render quality. People with slower machines may want to leave the default value of 2 at the cost of noticeable pixelization during camera manipulation.

Also, some laptops with older or integrated graphics could face issues with certain effects, so you may want to try if the issue will be resolved if you disable the “Use advanced GPU lighting” found at the very bottom in the general setting of each viewport mode. Even if you have a beefy configuration, you may try to switch the advanced GPU lighting on or off just to make sure you get the best visual quality from each viewport mode.

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Importing saved custom viewport modes in *ini file format is done from the following menu:

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Here are some of my custom viewport modes, along with a desciption how they differ from the default ones in Rhino:

My main viewport mode for 3d modeling which shows the rendering material, thinner curves and performs with a noticeably faster framerate than Rhino’s default Shaded viewport mode. Great for those with complex scenes and slower machines. It also has a derivative with a different background colour and hidden surface isocurves for cleaner looks:
Bobi 1.ini (13.8 KB)
Bobi 2.ini (13.8 KB)

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A nice looking single-shade viewport mode using the brushed silver environment map attached below. It also has a derivative with hidden edges and curves:
Bobi 3.ini (13.8 KB)
Bobi 4.ini (13.8 KB)

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Another single-shade viewport mode set to render thicker curves. It too has a derivative with hidden edges, though the curves are still visible:
Bobi 7.ini (13.8 KB)
Bobi 8.ini (13.8 KB)

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Two nearly identical single-share viewport modes. The first one uses the environment attached below. The second one has the environment map disabled, though it also looks nice with the second environment map below:
Сладоледчо.ini (13.8 KB)
Шоколадчо.ini (13.8 KB)

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Two analysis viewport models that quickly reveal if there is a missing wall off a polysurface or the direction of each surface. The second one is set to hide the surface edges. They both use the following environment maps, with the yellow being the main colour, while the blue is the backface colour:
Зайо Байо.ini (14.5 KB)
Зайо Байо 2.ini (14.6 KB)

The same viewport modes look much flatter with “Use advanced GPU lighting” turned on:

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Another couple of viewport modes with single-shade colour, this time the first one shows the border edges and failed seams in red colour, while the second one hides them completely. Uses the attached environment map:
Баба Меца.ini (13.9 KB)
Кума Лиса.ini (13.8 KB)

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Next are a couple of simple shaded modes:

Bobi X1.ini (13.9 KB)

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Bobi X2.ini (13.9 KB)

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These are 4 shaded modes with white material for making technical drawings:
Чертеж 1.ini (13.8 KB)
Чертеж 2.ini (13.8 KB)
Чертеж 3.ini (13.8 KB)
Чертеж 4.ini (13.8 KB)

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White material with fast shadow, perfect for artistic real-time presentations:
Чертеж 5.ini (12.7 KB)

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A semitransparent grey material good for taking screen-shots for technical drawings or 3d modeling with SubD:
Чертеж 6.ini (13.9 KB)

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A darker alternative to Rhino’s default Arctic mode:
BOBI Arctic.ini (12.8 KB)

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Now it’s time for the heavy hitters in terms of beautiful appearance at the cost of slower performance. These all use global illumination and take advantage of the aforementioned “Rhino Options > Advanced > Rhino.Options.OpenGL.SkylightShadowResolutionScaleDynamic” option set to a value of 1.

Rendereds materials with shadows and visible curves:
Bobi X3.ini (13.8 KB)

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Rendered materials with shadows and hidden curves:
Bobi X4.ini (13.8 KB)

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Light grey with shadows and visible curves:
Bobi X5.ini (13.9 KB)

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Light grey with shadows, and hidden curves and surface isocurves:
Bobi X6.ini (13.9 KB)

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Medium grey with shadows, and hidden curves and surface isocurves. Uses the following environment map:
Bobi X7.ini (13.9 KB)

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Medium grey with high contrast, shadows, and hidden curves and surface isocurves. Uses the following environment map:
Bobi X8.ini (13.9 KB)

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Medium grey with high contrast, shadows, and visible curves and surface isocurves. Uses the same environment map as the above viewport mode:
Bobi X9.ini (13.9 KB)

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Brushed silver with high contrast, shadows, visible surface isocurves and hidden curves. Uses the following environment map:
Bobi X10.ini (13.9 KB)

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EDIT: I made some enhancements to the World grid and World axis icon of the following display modes, so here is their updated version:
Alias 1.ini (13.4 KB)
Alias 2.ini (13.4 KB)
Alias 3.ini (13.4 KB)
Alias 4.ini (13.4 KB)
Clay 1.ini (13.9 KB)
Clay 2.ini (13.9 KB)
Bobi X10.ini (13.9 KB)

I keep the original display modes at the beginning of this post just in case that someone may prefer to use them over the enhanced versions. The environment maps for some of those could be found below.
Note: The 4 “Alias” and 2 “Clay” display modes are originally made by @FilmDesigner , I only did some subtle changes to them. See posts #19, #21 and #22 for the originals.

[milezee]

thats some collection of display modes @Rhino_Bulgaria Bobi, thanks for sharing
edit, ps the arctic mode is really nice

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

I’m glad to hear that you like it, it’s one of the primary display modes I use to take screen-shots for patent images.

[mrhe (Mariusz Hermansdorfer)]

Thanks for sharing all of these @Rhino_Bulgaria!

How does one set up these custom environment maps?

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

You have to open Rhino options and select the desired viewport mode, then browse to the directory where you have the environment maps saved on your hard drive and pick the one you want:

P.S.: I just figured out that a duplicate Bobi X8.ini was placed by accident where Bobi X9.ini should have been in my OP. This is fixed now.

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

This is an alternative setting for Bobi X8.ini with an added ground shadow. That’s the only difference with the same viewport mode listed in my original post above.

Bobi X8.ini (13.9 KB)

Medium grey with high contrast, shadows, and hidden curves and surface isocurves. Uses the following environment map:

[mar.bonanni (Marco)]

Great idea! Do you have any suggestion/recommendation to export the shading? Maybe I could share the one or two I’m using…

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

Sure, you can export your viewport modes from this menu in the options. Simply select the one you want to save and then press the “Export” button on the bottom right corner.

[mar.bonanni (Marco)]

oh ok, so nothing more than a simple export
thanks again for the great idea =)

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

It’s as simple as that. Note that at the beginning of my original post I mentioned two options that also cause some graphical changes to the viewports, as well as the performance.

[FilmDesigner (Scott Schneider)]

These are fantastic , thank you so much for sharing. Great idea about sharing these in the community.

[eobet]

Anyone have any bugs with these custom view modes?

I thought it was because I created a really huge matcap, but turns out, I see the bug I have using the modes in this thread as well:

This has persisted through several Rhino SR versions, and several Nvidia driver versions (I have a 3090), so I think it’s a Rhino bug? Either that or it’s some performance setting I don’t know about which I’ve accidentally enabled…

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

Looks like some performance-related setting. This is usually done by temporarily turning off some material features to boost the framerate.
Have you checked if your general graphics settings are similar to this? I think that “Antialiasing” set to 4x is way better looking than 2x while performing much faster than 8x which is almost identical in quality. Also, check “GPU Tesselltion”.

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Note that old desktop machines and many laptops with dual graphics usually have terrible visual issues with viewport modes that use environment maps and advanced GPU lighting simultaneously, this is why my recommendation is to uncheck “Use advanced GPU lighting”.

[eobet]

My settings look the same, and as mentioned I’m on a 3090 (desktop). Never used “advanced GPU lighting” either, because honestly it looks so bad I think it’s broken. Have you tried enabling it on the default “shaded” view mode, for example? That can’t be right.

Btw, this is my most used viewport display mode:

It’s basically just isolines and tangent edges hidden (and the “ambient occlusion” lighting method)… I’m very surprised this isn’t a built-in mode because it is in basically every other CAD package out there.

Design.ini (13.9 KB)

EDIT: Ok… got a bit inspired and actually created something I wanted myself for a long time… now, if only I could export these lines and shadow outlines as SVG…

Technicolor.ini (12.9 KB)

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

The second one is looking cool. I have a couple of similar viewport modes but I will give it a try later as I love anime-like 3d graphics.

As for the SVG scren-shot conversion, it’s a really great idea that hopefully will be taken seriously by the “McNeel” team.

[mar.bonanni (Marco)]

Here is a couple of my custom viewports that are worth sharing (other 2 are really similar to Bobi’s)
I simply didn’t like the standard shaded and ghosted viewport AT ALL, so made them more shiiiny ahah

This is the STANDARD SHADE for comparison

MY SHADED like view
no lightning, all isocurves the same color, thicker lines and dots because I’m getting lazy/blind…and a nice reflective matcap
Marco_Shiny_Color.ini (14.8 KB)

MY GHOSTED like view
a child of the shaded with kind of same settings but transparent.
Marco_Shiny_Color_Ghosted.ini (14.8 KB)

If anything else is needed, please ask. Enjoy

[Rhino_Bulgaria (Bobi)]

I also don’t like that the default “Shaded” viewport mode uses the object colour as the surface isolines colour. Makes it so much difficult to notice the actual isolines. Not to mention that for some reason it performs at slower framerate than my custom viewport modes, so there must be something wrong with it.

The “Shaded” viewport mode was even worse last year, before a fix that came with one of the Service releases).

Performance tanks during Fillet edge

Not sure why, but recently Rhino 7 appears to have a considerably worse performance while the “Fillet edge” command is active, in comparison to the earlier builds from the past few months. I tried several recent Nvidia drivers from 2022, as well couple of older drivers from 2021, but the framerate often drops to below 1 frame per second. Rhino have been always slower during “Fillet edge”, but the last couple of Rhino 7 Service release candidate updates made it much, much slower. The performance …

[FilmDesigner (Scott Schneider)]

These are some I did a while back that are my best approximation of the Alias viewport. Load the environment sphere in the appropriate location.

Alias_Environment_1.ini (13.6 KB)

Alias_Environment_2.ini (13.6 KB)

Alias_Environment_3.ini (13.6 KB)

Alias_Environment_4.ini (13.6 KB)

[eobet]

Lovely, but I don’t think I personally can use these… it’s going to remind me too much of all the things that I miss in Rhino… robust history, history view, object lister, query edit, all the lovely analytics tools, proportional modification that is usable, filleting that actually works, etc etc.

But that reminds me… I quite liked the clay mode… do you happen to have that one? Otherwise that’s a good candidate for me to try to recreate.

[FilmDesigner (Scott Schneider)]

Try this

Clay_01.ini (14.2 KB)