Chapter 5 | View & Render Options
Introduction
Chapter 3 explored the workflows for exporting diagrams and videos. Virtual CRASH 6 provides users with the tools to create stunning HD animations and visuals. It enables the creation of both static images and animations, with a variety of rendering options available, including the option to use raytracing effects. Utilizing raytracing through offline rendering can markedly increase the realism of visual aids. However, the time required for rendering depends on the user's hardware strength and the rendering settings chosen in Virtual CRASH 6. With the Lightspeed Realtime Render Engine, Virtual CRASH 6 has removed the need to offline render many types of cases and scenarios. Continue reading to learn more details about the rendering functionality in Virtual CRASH 6.
High-Quality Visual Productions with Real-Time and “Offline” Rendering
As you head into the production stage, you'll need to decide whether to use real-time or offline rendering. This generally involves a trade-off between quality and production speed. For most diagrams and videos, the Lightspeed Realtime Render Engine (TM) in “Smooth + Texture” mode [Ctrl+7] will likely provide quality that's suitable for your productions. However, in some instances, you may still opt to “render” final productions in “Direct Light” or “Skylight” render modes. These offline modes simulate the behavior of light rays permeating throughout your scene. When scenes are rendered in Direct Light or Skylight, you'll notice enhanced textures, complex shadowing, more reflections, and anti-aliasing in your visuals. This results in visuals that have a more polished and professional appearance overall, but be aware that they will take longer to produce—typically many hours for video. In many types of scenes, you may notice no difference at all between current, Direct Light, and Skylight. If you're upgrading from VC3, VC4, or VC5, you might observe longer per-frame render times in VC6 when using Direct Light and Skylight modes. This variation is influenced by the materials, resolution, and supersample settings, and is attributable to the additional texture channels (normal, metalness, and roughness) being rendered.
To render a static view of your project, left-click on the teapot icon (see below), left-click on the preferred “Supersamples” option, then left-click on either “Direct Light” or “Skylight”. You can also go to Window menu in the menu bar. The teapot icon is typically used to generate a quick rendered preview of your scale diagram or single frames of a video. The Supersamples determines the quality of the render. As you select a higher value for Supersamples, the rendering quality increases at the expense of render time. For scale diagrams, the render time is not a critical issue since a diagram will be rendered once. For videos, which require numerous frames to be rendered, you will need to decide the optimal Supersamples setting for your project in order to reduce render time, while maintaining adequate visual quality. Rendering videos is discussed in the chapters below. Rendering high-resolution diagrams is also discussed in the chapters below.
Below we see a preview of our diagram rendered in Skylight.
Differences between Skylight and Direct light
When offline rendering in Virtual CRASH 6, you will need to decide the best look for your visual – either Direct light or Skylight. Here we see our real-time rendered vehicle displayed in “Smooth + Texture” [Ctrl+7] mode.
In the case of off-line rendered scenes, direct light emits light rays through the scene originating from the scene’s primary directional light sources, which is controlled in the “environment” menu interface. Direct light leads to a hard-edge shadow effect and reflections off low roughness and high metalness materials, such as glass, cab, or chrome. Material properties and settings are describe in more detail in the chapters ahead. Below we see an example render in Direct Light.
Skylight provides the same lighting as Direct Light, with the addition of light rays emanating from a hemisphere around the Virtual CRASH environment. This leads to the addition of diffuse shadows directly underneath all objects. In general, Skylight provides the most realistic renders. Below we see our scene rendered in Skylight.
Speed Up Offline Renders
In order to speed up the offline rendering process, Virtual CRASH 6 provides additional controls in the project settings via Properties > Render. There, you will find the “skylight sub-rays” and “reflection sub-rays” settings. These settings allow you to better optimize render speed versus render quality. When using skylight or direct light, and before launching a full production render job, conduct a series of test renders. Adjust these settings such that your render quality is sufficient for your needs, but render times are kept reasonable. Also, note that for most nighttime scenes, direct light works very well.
Tags: How to create animation, creating animation, rendering, render, how to turn on reflections, how to turn off reflections, direct light, skylight, supersample, supersamples, ray tracing, draft.
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