Rendering

Ndunes provides several image rendering tools available in the Render menu.

Render menu

The first item opens the Rendering Setup window. It shows all the parameters related to the rendering actions. They are saved within the current scene document.

Opening the Rendering setup window

The Common options are:

• Settings preset: which settings preset to use when doing a rendering (see Settings). The settings window can be opened with the last item of the Render menu.
• Image width and height: dimension of the rendered image in pixels. For the environment map export, size of a single face of the cube map.
• Output folder: directory where the final images are saved. This folder is relative to the current working directory.

The second group called Animation contains properties used when rendering a camera animation:

• Animated camera: which camera track to render. Only the cameras with a curve are available for export. See Animating the camera along a curve path.
• Frames per second: speaks for itself...
• Start and end time: allows to crop the animation by exporting the frames between the time interval.

Taking a snapshot

The second item of the menu, Taking Snapshot saves the content of the viewport in the output folder. Nothing fancy here, just a simple screenshot. The size and quality of the image is the same as the viewport.

Rendering an image

Rendering an image is comparable to taking a snapshot except that the Render settings preset can be select in the setup as well as the final image size. The Render preset allows to define high quality parameters. Unlike taking a snapshot, the rendering operation is not immediate and may need additionnal calculations.

Exporting an environment map

By triggering this action, the current view is exported as an environment map. This is a full 360° view that can be reused in a indoor scene or in any external environment viewer.

This action saves 3 files:

• a traditionnal .jpg file showing the lattitude/longitude map;
• a .hdr file holding the lattitude/longitude map in high dynamic range;
• a .red file containing the raw cube map to be used in any REDsdk application.

As for rendering an image, the rendering presets are used when exporting the environment map. The image width specifies the size of the cube faces. The width of the lattitude/longitude image will then be ( 4 * width ). Its height will be ( 2 * width ).

Environment map generated with NDunes

Rendering a camera animation

It is possible to create a curve path for a camera. This can be seen here: Animating the camera along a curve path. The images generated from the camera animation along the curve can then be saved as a series of frames in .jpg format as well as a video in .mp4 format.

The camera animation export uses the settings preset defined in the render setup window as well as the image width and height. The exported camera must be selected in the same render setup window.