Render basics

On this page, you can create photo-quality visualizations of your designs.

After assembling the visual plan in the usual way, select an appropriate viewpoint and go to the photorealistic page. You can only enter from the developed (third) view!

Here you can set the lights, image size, and quality.

Render completion time

• The time required to complete the render depends on the lighting, image size, quality settings, your computer’s capacity, and the complexity of the visual plan.
  
  
• It can take from a few minutes to several hours. Therefore, we have developed an option to render time-consuming images in one go at a neutral time (e.g., at night). See below for details. However, you can still use your computer for other tasks, even continuing to work in Piper 3D, while the image is being generated.

Setting image size and quality:

When you open the photorealistic rendering page, a window appears where you can set the size and quality of the image. You can choose from 5 image sizes and 5 image qualities. The images will automatically remain size-accurate, but you can also set a custom, even non-proportional, image size by pressing the custom switch.

5 quality levels:

• Quality 1: Shadows appear, but no anti-aliasing.
  
  
• Quality 2: Anti-aliasing, shading, and reflections are present.
  
  
• Quality 3: Diffuse shading appears alongside the above.
  
  
• Quality 4: Adds full reflection (radiosity) to the previous level.
  
  
• Quality 5: Includes photon mapping, higher sampling, and more detailed finishing.
  Note! Quality 5 has the longest render time.

By pressing the advanced settings switch, you can enlarge the window to adjust various lights and fine-tuning settings.

• Once everything is set, enter a name and press the START button.
  
  
• If the only create file switch is not turned on, the Pov-Ray program will start and process the automatically created .pov file.
  
  
• This process consists of two parts: first, it processes the data, then it displays the image.
  
  
  • Data processing takes a few seconds, up to 1-2 minutes even with many objects.
    
    
  • Image rendering time depends on the settings.
    
    
• When the image is ready, Pov-Ray will shut down, and the image will appear in Piper.
  
  
• The finished .jpg image is saved in the ...\data\image subdirectory and can be printed from the traditional Picture viewer section.
  
  

Starting from version 3.8, after the visualization is ready, you can jump directly to the image viewer page with the image viewer icon circled in red.

Batch rendering for later processing

If you turn on the only create file switch, pressing the START button will only create the .pov file, which is not time-consuming.

  The icon opens a window where you can see all the .pov files created so far.

From this list, select the files you want to process, then press the OK button. The program will sequentially create the images and list their completion times on the right.

Important!

Do not close the Piper program during this process! If it does close, Pov-Ray will finish the currently processing image, but the cycle will not continue.

Keywords: #render #image size #quality #pov-ray #only create file #.pov