The Render Settings Dialog Box

Rendering » Render Settings

Quality Settings Presets

Click Quality Settings Presets to display a context menu that allows saving, loading, and deleting all settings entered in that module.

File Output (tab)

Image

View

Select the view to be used for image calculation. All cameras, viewpoints, predefined camera track animations, or variants (if camera was active on its creation) can be selected from the drop-down menu. If a track is chosen, all contained viewpoints are rendered automatically.

Filename
Sets the path and name of the image file to save the rendering to.
Use Time Stamp
Appends a timestamp to the filename.
Image Size Presets

The drop-down menu offers presets for all usual resolutions like PAL, NTSC, HD 720, HD 1080, and 4K.

Image Size

If a preset from above is used, the corresponding amount of pixel for horizontal and vertical resolution are filled in automatically. Enter numerical input to set up any resolution, in which case the Image Size Preset changes to custom.

Printing Size
Sets width and height of the resulting print in centimeters.
Resolution
Sets the printing resolution in dots per inch.
Region Render
Restrict rendering to the rectangular region specified by the following coordinates.
  • Use Current Render Window Region: Sets the upper left and lower right corner according to the rectangle selected in the render window viewport. If the button is activated, upper left and lower right corners are updated automatically with any change of the region in the viewport.

  • Upper Left Corner: Defines the X and the Y coordinate for the upper left corner of the region frame.

  • Lower Right Corner: Defines the X and the Y coordinate for the lower right corner of the region frame.

Render Mode

Sets the illumination mode to apply for rendering the image to a file.

The following render modes are available:

  • CPU Rasterization: This mode does not compute direct reflection, nor does it compute refraction or any other sophisticated visual effect.

  • Precomputed Illumination: This mode is comparable to VRED OpenGL rendering mode. It uses precomputed Ambient Occlusion and indirect illumination for rendering and calculates specular reflections and refractions and correct shadows from light sources.

  • Precomputed + Shadows: This mode uses precomputed image-based lighting and indirect illumination but doesn’t use precomputed Ambient Occlusion values. Instead, it calculates shadows based on the active environment.

  • Precomputed + IBL: This mode uses precomputed indirect illumination and samples the environment.

  • Full Global Illumination: The Full Global Illumination Mode doesn’t use any precomputed values but accurately samples everything in a physically based approach. Other features like Photon Mapping require the render mode to be set to Full Global Illumination.

    Caution: This value automatically changes the still frame illumination mode on the Raytracing Quality tab.
Render Quality

Sets the number of image samples that are used for rendering.

Available Presets are:

  • Draft

  • Preview

  • Production

  • Production Interior

  • Caution: This value automatically changes the Antialiasing Image Samples value of the General Settings tab.
Supersampling

Activates / deactivates supersampling for the rendering. The default setting is On.

Background Color
Sets the background color when rendering a file in Raytracing render mode.
Tonemap HDR

Applies tone mapping to the high dynamic image rendering. As a result, the 32-bit renderings look the same in the compositing tool as set in VRED. However, the values of the image are compressed by the chosen tone mapper to values from 0 through 1. In doing so, the dynamic range is lost. Therefore, effects like glow are hard to calculate in the compositing tool afterwards.

Export Alpha Channel:

Activates alpha channel rendering. If the file type supports alpha channels, the alpha channel is embedded into the resulting image. The background color is seen through transparent objects.

Premultiply Alpha
Renders the alpha channel premultiplied.
ICC Profile

VRED supports the storage of ICC color profiles within the project data to ensure color management consistency during the entire workflow and between devices. Storing ICC color profiles guarantees that the colors visible on the workstation are the same as on any other computer. The default setting is Current Settings.

Meta Data

This feature embeds certain scene settings in the rendered output. Later, you can import the rendering (its meta data) into VRED using File Menu » Import » Rendering Meta Data. The settings saved within the image on creation are applied to the currently loaded scene, for example the camera settings adopt.

Note: This option is only available for JPG, PNG, TIFF, and EXR files.
All
Embed all the following meta data.
Render Settings

Embed current render settings as meta data to the rendered image, for example, image resolution, image samples, pixel filter, and Raytracing quality settings.

Camera
Embed the settings of the currently active camera as meta data.
Scenegraph
  • Node Visibilities: Embeds the visibility states of all scenegraph nodes as meta data.

  • Switch Node States: Embeds all switch node choice states as meta data.

Materials
  • Switch Material States: Embeds all switch material choice states as meta data.

Saving and restoring node visibilities and switch node states relies on a consistent naming scheme of the nodes within the scenegraph hierarchy. The same applies to switch materials within the hierarchy of the materials within the material editor’s list view. As the meta data does not contain information on nodes/materials that are added or renamed since the rendering, their states remain unchanged when importing the rendering meta data. Also, if there are inconsistencies some states may not be reconstructed. All nodes and materials whose state could not be reconstructed will be displayed in the import results dialog after the import has finished.

Consistency of visibility states

In the meta data, you can identify a node by its node path, which is a concatenation of the names of its ancestors and itself. If all nodes with the same node path have the same visibility, the node path is considered to be consistent and it is stored with this visibility on meta data export. If nodes with the same node path have different visibilities, this node path is considered to be inconsistent and it is not considered during export. The visibility state of those inconsistent nodes cannot be reconstructed on import and remains unchanged.

To ensure that all visibilities are exported and reconstruct able on import, either make sure that all nodes with the same path have the same visibility, or create an unambiguous node path by renaming the respective nodes.

Consistency of switch states

In the meta data, the state of a switch node/material is defined by the name of the node/material selected by the choice (called choice name in the following). The choice is considered to be consistent if the choice names of all switches with the same node /material path are identical.

To ensure that all switch states are exported and reconstruct able on import, either make sure that all switches with the same path have the same choice, or rename the respective switches.

When importing switch states, if the switch has several children called choice name, a state of a switch in the scene cannot be restored . In this case, the switch is displayed in the import results dialog with its proposed choice name.

The scene-contained switches should not have multiple choices with the same name.

Renderpasses

Export Renderpasses: Activates rendering with render passes. All activated Renderpasses are rendered and saved at a time.

Combined Channels (tab)

Color Channels
  • Beauty

  • Diffuse IBL

  • Diffuse Light

  • Diffuse Indirect

  • Incandescence

  • Background Color

  • Specular Reflection

  • Glossy IBL

  • Glossy Light

  • Glossy Indirect

  • Translucency

  • Transparency Color

Auxiliary Channels
  • Occlusion

  • Mask

  • Material ID

  • Depth

  • Normal

  • Position

  • View Vector

Separated Channel (tab)

Material Channels
  • Diffuse Color

  • Glossy Color

  • Specular Color

  • Incandescence

  • Translucency Color

  • Transparency Color

  • Background Color

Illumination Channels
  • IBL Diffuse

  • Lights Diffuse

  • Indirect Diffuse

  • IBL Glossy

  • Lights Glossy

  • Indirect Glossy

  • IBL Translucency

  • Light Translucency

  • Indirect Specular

Note: To reconstruct the beauty pass image using the other renderpasses it is necessary to render to EXR/HDR/Floating Point TIFF image format without Tonemap HDR activated. Because Tonemapping changes the linearity of values, render with Tonemapping after the renderpasses are combined to the final image. To reconstruct the beauty pass, layer the Diffuse IBL/Light /Indirect , Glossy IBL/Light /Indirect, Specular Reflection, Translucency, and Incandescence Passes using a linear add operation in your compositing tool.

Animation

Render Animation

Activation makes animation-related settings accessible; it provides the possibility to render an animation clip or only a part of it.

Type
Sets the type of animation (Clip or Timeline).
Animation Clip

This option is only accessible when no camera track animation or variant is selected within the Image / View menu on top of the module. A predefined clip can be selected here.

Format

Image generates a picture for every frame. Movie provides the output within a single AVI movie file. Video file compression settings are available in a later step after initializing the render process.

Use Clip Range

To render the whole clip, select this option. To render only a sequence from the selected clip, deselect it and define the first and the last image the sequence in Start Frame/Stop Frame. Frame Step helps when not every frame of an animation sequence should be generated. With a Frame Step setting of 3, for example, VRED renders every third image of the sequence. The default value 1 generates one image per frame.

Frames per Second

This option is available when Movie is selected as the Format; it defines the frame rate for the output movie.

Cluster

The creation of pictures can be distributed to other computers connected to the network (cluster).

Enable Cluster
Enables the cluster.
Hostnames

Defines the clustering slaves. Hostnames and IPs can be used to access the slaves.

General Settings (tab)

In the General Settings tab, you can enter various global parameters for antialiasing, pixel filter, and other options.

Antialiasing

Computer screens are made of small pixels which is why illustrations of round objects or curved surfaces appear faceted at their edges. Antialiasing is a technique that makes the edges from rendered objects less pixelated.

The Antialiasing settings control the number of samples taken during stillframe antialiasing. These are the primary controls that influence the quality of the rendered image.

Use Image Samples

Sets the number of samples taken during stillframe antialiasing. Higher values produce a cleaner result while lower values reduce the render time. A value of 128 is a recommended starting point in general but may be too low for interior scenes with full global illumination.

Use Time
Threshold sets the maximum duration for creating a single image.
Use Infinity Rendering in Viewpoint (Checkbox)

If this option is selected, the calculation of the image samples lasts endlessly. If this box is not checked, there are as many image samples calculated as set in Use Image Samples (for example, 256 images). Or the calculation takes until the preset time is reached.

Start Update Render With
Sets the number of samples at which the antialiasing render update starts. A value of 16 typically prevents grainy-looking progress samples from displaying. The render continues to calculate in the background.
Adaptive Sampling

Adaptive sampling allows the raytracer to skip regions that are already smooth and focus the processing power on regions that are still noisy. The various quality settings control a threshold for a region to be considered as smooth. Setting the control to Highest Quality disables adaptive antialiasing and always samples each pixel with the number of image samples specified. While this gives the highest render quality it may waste processing power and time on regions that are already smooth.

  • Preview Quality: Sets the sampling quality to a low level, resulting in preview render quality, and short render times.

  • Low Quality: Sets the sampling quality to low level, resulting in average render quality, and short render times.

  • Medium Quality: Sets the sampling quality to medium level, resulting in good render quality, and medium render times.

  • High Quality: Sets the sampling quality to high-quality level.

  • Ultra High Quality: Sets sampling quality to a production quality level.

  • Highest Quality: Sets the sampling quality to the maximum available quality level.

Use Clamping

Activates clamping of bright pixels to eliminate white spots after antialiasing. The value sets the maximum value for a white pixel.

Caution: Activating clamping and reducing the value reduces the maximum resulting image color range.
Enable Denoise Filter for Ray Tracing

When this option is selected, Denoise Filter Threshold becomes active and can be edited. This filter reduces noise for ray tracing on antialiased images. With Use Infinite Rendering in Viewport disabled, when the image refines to 100 percent in the viewport, either based on samples or time limit, the result is shown in the viewport. The denoise filter should also work with clusters.

Denoise Filter Threshold

Sets the threshold filter value for the level of noise reduction. The parameter can be set to values between 0 and 3. It controls the aggressiveness of the filter. The larger the value is, the more noise is removed and simultaneously more blurring artifacts may be introduced.

Filter and Save Now

Filters the current image in the viewport, using the threshold value specified. The filtered image is saved at the location specified in the render settings->file output->filename and has the same format as well. Its name is based on the filename specified there with a suffix and the unfiltered original image is saved next to it.

Pixel Filter

A pixel filter weights the image samples taken per pixel and therefore controls the antialiasing quality of the rendering. High image filter sizes may result in blurry images.

Filter

Box Filter: The box filter is the simplest pixel filter. It weights each image sample equally. A size of 0.5 should be used for this pixel filter.

Triangle Filter: The triangle filter linearly distributes the samples between the various pixels. It gives decent results and is therefore the default pixel filter in VRED. It should be used with a size of 1.0 independent of screen resolution.

Gaussian Filter: The gaussian filter uses a gaussian function to weight the samples. Samples near the center of a pixel receive a larger weight compared to samples that are further away from the pixel center. It gives slightly better results compared to the triangle filter in some situations. A size of 1.0–1.2 is recommended.

Mitchell Netravali: The Mitchell Netravali filter prevents blurring that may occur when using box, triangle, gaussian, or bspline filter by sharpening the image. It gives the highest-quality result but may suffer from ringing on hard contrast edges. A size of 2.2 is recommended.

Lanczos Filter: The lanczos filter is a sinc-based filter that does an optimal reconstruction of the image. It delivers sharp high-quality results but may suffer from ringing. A size of 2.5 is recommended.

Bspline Filter: The bspline filter uses a bspline function to weight the samples. It gives results comparable to gaussian filtering but suffers less from blurring. A value of 1.3–1.5 is recommended.

Catmull Rom: The catmull rom filter creates sharp images but may suffer from ringing, just like the lanczos and mitchell netravalli filter. A size of 2.5 is recommended.

Sharp Triangle Filter: In this triangle filter variant, one sample affects only 1 pixel. This way the first impression of the image looks sharper and the image noise is high frequent.

Sharp Gauss Filter: In this Gauss filter variant, one sample affects only 1 pixel. This way the first impression of the image looks sharper and the image noise is high frequency.

Sharp BSpline Filter: In this BSpline filter variant, one sample affects only 1 pixel. This way the first impression of the image looks sharper and the image noise is high frequency.

Size

The pixel filter size defines the number of neighboring pixels that are taken in account for sampling.

Options

Certain rendering features can be enabled or disabled globally.

Enable Photometric Parameters

Activates the photometrically consistent rendering pipeline to generate images containing realistic and reliable luminance information. The process chain includes photometric input values for light sources, environment maps, materials, cameras, clamping threshold and the display luminance. Spectral data for light sources and incandescence are photometrically consistent and physically implausible parameters are removed from the user interface. This mode provides the means to reproduce the rendering results with realistic luminance information on the display. Therefore, it is necessary to set up the display luminance parameter to match the current display, preferably using measured data. Also, adjust the clamping threshold and the tone mapping parameters of the cameras accordingly.

Enable Spectral Rendering

Activates the spectral rendering pipeline for Raytracing. The lighting simulation calculation uses spectral distributions for all the colors instead of conventional tristimulus RGB values. The spectral information for the color channels of materials and light sources can be provided and edited by opening the respective color dialogs. In the color dialog, activate the Spectrum tab to gain access to the spectral data. To enable spectral input data for a color channel, select the Use Spectrum option. The plot area displays the spectral distribution depending on the settings to the right.

Spectrum
  • File: Allows loading and saving a spectral distribution to a file based on the settings in this window.

  • Red/Green/Blue: Allows computing spectral data from RGB input values.

  • Scale: Rescales the photometric value of a spectrum by changing the value V of a spectrum while keeping the hue H and saturation S constant.

  • Edit Sample Distribution: Allows setting the number and distribution of spectral samples in the spectral domain.

    Note: Changing the sample distribution will only take effect after confirming by clicking Apply.
    • Presets: Choose from a collection of predefined settings suitable for most use cases. Sampling spectra between 380 nm and 730 nm is widely considered sufficient to capture the perception of light by human observers.

    • Allow Non-Uniform Sample Distribution: Allows editing the sample wave lengths of the spectral samples individually.

    • Start: The wavelength of the first spectral sample of the distribution.

    • Delta: The distance between the samples to be created.

    • Number: The number of samples to be created.

Illuminant

The illuminant sets the light spectrum that is considered to be white. Usually this value should be D65 to match daylight.

  • Equal Energy: Uses an equal energy spectrum as white. An equal energy spectrum has an equal value for all wavelengths.

  • D65: Uses a D65 daylight spectrum as white.

Optimize for Many Light Sources

In scenes with many light sources or geometry light sources rendering may slow down. Activating this flag allows the renderer to optimize the light calculation by slightly reducing the quality which significantly increases the rendering performance. While the quality loss is not recognizable in most situations, some scenes may suffer from heavy noise when this feature is selected. In such scenes it can be necessary to disable the optimization to get a clean render result.

Enable NURBS Raytracing

VRED is able to render NURBS data without tessellation before; this requires selecting that feature.

Cost Visualization
Analyzes where the most time is spent while tracing an image.
BRDF Behavior

The new BRDF model conserves energy better. The weighting of the diffuse/ glossy / specular layers should consider the glossy / specular colors in addition to the fresnel reflectivity so that the result does not show dark edges when the glossy color turns to black, but instead displays a purely diffuse material. This does also allow better fine-tuning of the specular reflections. For compatibility reasons, the old BRDF model can still be chosen from the following list. Version 2014 and beyond does consider the glossy color to weight the diffuse color and avoid darkened edges.

  • Ver. 2014 and above

  • Ver. 6.0x and below

Number of CPU Cores

Sometimes it is required to limit the number cores VRED uses for Raytracing to have some processing power left for other applications. This setting is a runtime only setting and it does not influence any cluster machines.

Raytracing Quality (tab)

In the Raytracing Quality tab , parameters for illumination, photon tracing, various sampling qualities, trace depth, and materials can be set globally.

Illumination Mode

Interactive / Still Frame:

VRED has various illumination modes for rendering in Raytracing. Different illumination modes for interactive rendering and still frame rendering are available. This allows working in a precomputed mode for fast interaction with the scene and automatically switching to full global illumination for still frame rendering. Five modes are available:

  • CPU Rasterization: This mode does not compute direct reflection, nor does it compute refraction or any other sophisticated visual effect.

  • Precomputed Illumination: This mode is comparable to VRED OpenGL rendering mode. It uses precomputed Ambient Occlusion and indirect illumination for rendering and calculates specular reflections and refractions and correct shadows from light sources.

  • Precomputed + Shadows: This mode uses precomputed image-based lighting and indirect illumination but doesn’t use precomputed Ambient Occlusion values. Instead, it calculates shadows based on the active environment.

  • Precomputed + IBL: This mode uses precomputed indirect illumination and samples the environment.

  • Full Global Illumination: The Full Global Illumination Mode doesn’t use any precomputed values but accurately samples everything in a physically based approach. Other features like Photon Mapping require the render mode to be set to Full Global Illumination.

Photon Tracing

Photon Tracing provides an approach to calculate the global illumination in a scene. The default full global illumination mode in VRED provides high-quality results but may require longer calculation times. Photon Tracing can reduce the time required to render a clean image by a larger margin, especially in indoor scenarios like car interiors, or architectural indoor scenes.

Mode:

VRED provides different Photon mapping modes.

  • Off: Disables Photon Tracing and uses the default full global illumination algorithm in VRED.

  • Indirect Only: Uses photon tracing to calculate the indirect illumination in a scene. This is the most common mode.

  • Caustics + Indirect: Uses Photon Tracing to calculate indirect illumination and caustics due to specular materials in a scene.

Trace Depth
Sets the trace depth of the photon tracer.
Interactive and still frame count

Both photon count values specify the number of photons being sent into the scene for each image sample. Specifying a photon count of 100.000 photons while having set the image samples set to 256 results in 25.600.000 photons send into the scene for a frame. The higher the number of sent photons, the less pixelated the output is.

Use Automatic Photon Radius

A preprocess is doing a lookup of the 16 closest photons for each photon in the scene and calculates two times the average lookup radius. This feature works for most situations.

Photon Radius

This value specifies the radius around a hitpoint the raytracer is looking for photons. A larger radius allows the raytracer to find more photons but may result in slower lookup times.

Interactive / Still Frame Final Gather

There are two ways to use the photon map. The first approach is always used for caustic photons. It gathers photons around a hitpoint to calculate the incoming illumination. This approach gives fast interactive performance and can calculate all light paths in a scene, but it may require a high photon count to get a clean image. The other approach is to use final gathering. In final gathering, a one bounce indirect illumination is performed before evaluating the Photon Maps. This is the default Photon Tracing approach in VRED since it generates high-quality images in a short time. Setting the final gather quality to Off enables the first approach while setting it to any other value uses the second approach.

Final Gather Radius

Sets the lookup radius used to find the nearest final gather point during Raytracing. Using a smaller radius increases performance but it requires more photons to avoid dark regions.

Note: To evaluate the final gather points use the Indirect Illumination Rendering with photon mapping and final gathering turned on. For a good quality result, the final gather points should have few black regions where no photons are stored.
Final Gather Refresh

Setting the Final Gather Quality (Interactive / Still Frame Final Gather values) to 1 or higher, the update frequency of the Photon Map may be set. By default the Photon Maps are updated for each image sample, sending many photons into the scene. If final gather quality is set to Off, it is often sufficient to update the Photon Map only once per frame and use it for each image sample to reduce the render times.

  • On Each Sample: Updates the Photon Map for each image sample. This is the default setting since it also works for scenes with animated objects that may cause flickering otherwise.

  • On Scene Change: The Photon Map is updated once per frame unless motion blur is activated. Since caustics require many photons, the Caustic Map is still updated for each sample while the indirect illumination Photon Map is only updated once. This setting often results in the best rendering performance but requires a much higher photon count to receive artefact-free results, particularly when rendering scenes with animated objects, the result may flicker in regions with a low photon count. This is why this mode should only be used for scenes with static geometry and materials.

Use Final Gather for Glossy Reflections

When activated, glossy reflections are evaluated by the final gather map rather than path tracing. This reduces the rendertime but results in less accurate reflections.

IBL Sampling Quality

Interactive

Sets the interactive IBL sampling quality.

Still Frame

Sets the still frame IBL sampling quality.

Reflection/Refraction Sampling Quality Settings

Interactive

Sets the interactive sampling quality of reflections and refractions.

Still Frame

Sets the still frame sampling quality of reflections and refractions.

Trace Depth

Interactive

Sets the interactive amount of reflection and refraction each ray may encounter.

Still Frame

Sets the still frame amount of reflection and refraction each ray may encounter.

Material Overrides

Each material can bring its own settings for material properties, illumination mode, IBL sampling quality, reflection / refraction quality and trace depth. For each material, different overrides can be set separately in the Raytracing Settings in the Material Editor.

Predetermined, all overrides are globally activated. That means, you can use different render settings for each material. This can be deactivated here, so the special material settings are ignored.

Description of each attribute can be found in the ~materials section.

Display Output (tab)

In the tab Display Output several parameters can be defined globally for color, histogram and visual support.

Color

Monitor Luminance (cd/m²)

This setting is only available when the checkbox Enable Photometric Parameters is active under General Settings > Options. This parameter is used to set up the luminance value of the preferred display. When using photometric parameters, the actual monitor luminance is necessary to reproduce the rendering results with realistic photometric values on the display device.

Monitor Colorspace
  • Simple Gamma

  • sRGB IEC 61966-21

  • A.RGB98

  • Monitor ICC Profile

Histogram

The histogram shows the relative color distribution of the rendered image. This tool is useful to detect over bright areas of light. Different modes are available. Logarithmic and linear display scale.

Show Histogram
Each color distribution can be viewed separately
Red
Shows histogram of red image channel.
Green
Shows histogram of green image channel.
Blue
Shows histogram of blue image channel.
Logarithmic Scale
Uses a logarithmic scale for the histogram values.
Grayscale
Shows the luminance histogram of the rendered image.

Visual Support

Show Snapshot Frame

Draws a yellow frame into renderview, indicating the target image to be rendered. After activation, all the following settings are available.

Show Region Render Frame

Draws a green frame into the renderview dependent on the values of the region start XY and region end XY input fields.

Show Rule of Thirds Guide

Draws orange guide lines into renderview, allowing to use the rule of thirds.

Show Inner Frame

Draws an orange frame into the renderview, indicating the area where text or graphics show neatly.

Unit
Defines the distance unit of the inner frame in Percent or Pixel.
Left - Right
Sets the distance of the left and right side.
Top - Bottom
Sets the distance of the top and bottom side

Start Image Calculation

Add to Render Queue

Creates a job from the current camera view and adopts last settings from the render module, after submitting the Render Queue Window opens.

Render
Creates the image or movie with current settings.