Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Render Settings

The render settings control various options related to the output of rendered, or full quality images. Rendering an image will calculate effects not displayed in the editing environment (due to their complexity), and therefore takes a larger amount of time to produce an image. If you notice an error partway through a render, then you can press escape to abort.

Contents 1 The Scene Tab 2 Output / Render Layers 3 Render 4 Anim / Bake

[edit] The Scene Tab

Let's take a look at all of the rendering options that Blender has. Open up a new scene (CTRL + X) and press F10. You should see something that looks like this:

These are the default settings for Blender. Let's take a look at all of these tabs and see what they do.

[edit] Output / Render Layers

This is the first tab on the left. First of all, we see a file locator icon ( ) to the left of /tmp/. This is Blender's temporary directory. (Normally C:/tmp on Windows) Below that, we see another file locator icon, labeled //backbuf. This is the Back Buffered image, one way to make an image the background on your render. Simply use that file locator to find a file, and Blender will use it as the background image (the backbuf button must be clicked to activate it). Finally, the last one is //ftype. The Blender description reads "image to use with FTYPE image type."

The next row down, we see this: "What do these do?!" you ask. Well, it's actually quite simple. First of all, the first button is the backbuf button that I just talked about. If you have selected a background image to render using the "backbuf" option, clicking this button will make it show up. Next, on the right, are the 'Edge' and 'Edge Settings' buttons. Clicking the 'Edge' button will render your image with edges. Edges are rendered where the camera sees an edge. For an experiment, turn it on and render to see what happens. Notice how the default cube now has a black edge around it. If you want it bigger, click the 'Edge Settings' button. Here, you can change the size of the edge that is rendered, as well as the color. The next button we are going to talk about is the 'Threads' button. Clicking this enables threads, which allows the renderer to do threaded processes. Basically, if you have a dual-core processor (Athlon X2, Intel Core2Duo, etc.) it will have one processor render part of the image at the same time that the other processor is rendering another part. This (generally) helps reduce rendering time. Finally, the last button on this row is the 'Free Tex Images' button, which "Frees all images used by textures after each render".

There is one last row of buttons below. The bunch of little squares enable you to tell Blender where to put the render window on your screen. Try pushing one and then rendering to see for yourself. The "Save Buffers" button saves all the tiles from every render layer and SceneNodes to files, saving memory. Experiment to try it out. The dither button will put dither noise in your image. The render window button allows you to render your image in a new window, render it full screen in the UV Image Editor, or render the result in the UV Image Editor (but not in full screen), a good idea when working with nodes. The extensions button adds extensions to your animations.

[edit] Render

Now, let's move on to the render tab! The first thing you should notice is the VERY BIG button that says 'Render' on it. This button performs the same action as the F12 button. Below this is a drop-down box, allowing you to change between the Blender Internal Render engine and YAFRAY. (For more on YAFRAY, see YAFRAY Render Options). Next to the 'Render' button are 5 buttons: Shadow, Env Map, Pano, Ray, Radio. These are explained in detail below:

• Shadow: Lights will cast shadows. If this is turned off, nothing will cast a shadow. To see this, add a plane below your default cube and render. Now turn this button off and see how there are no shadows.
• EnvMap: Use the environment map.
• Pano: This enables panoramic rendering. For more on panoramic rendering, see Panorama Settings
• Ray: This enables Ray Tracing. Turn it off, and render the same images as I talked about in the description of the Shadow button. "What!?" you say. "That did the same thing as turning off the shadows! What's the deal?" Well, ray tracing is used to calculate how light goes through objects like glass and stuff. It also has something to do with shadows.
• Radio: This stands for Radiosity.

Moving on, the next button we come to is the 'OSA' button. For the use of this button, see OSA

To the right of the OSA button, are some percentages. These will set the renderer to render at the specified percent of the resolution that you have set. (We'll come to resolution later) For an experiment, press the '50%' button. As you can see, Blender renders the image at 50% of the set resolution. This is an easy way to make a quick render.

Next on our tour, we come to two boxes labeled 'Xparts' and 'Yparts'. These buttons change the number of boxes that Blender will render in total. Play around with these to see how they change the number of small boxes in the render window when you render.

[edit] Anim / Bake

The final tab we'll (briefly) cover is the Anim(Animation) tab. If you have made an animation, pressing the 'ANIM' button will render your animation. Right below it are two buttons, Do Sequence and Do Composite. The Do Sequence button will render your animation with any effects you have done in the Sequence Editor and the Do Composite button will render an animation with your composite node work included. The Sta: and End: are the start and end frame numbers. The default setting is that your animation will start at frame 1, and will end at frame 250.