Render Workbench: Difference between revisions

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# '''Create a rendering project:''' Press the button in the toolbar corresponding to your renderer and select a template suitable for your renderer (you may start with a 'studio' flavour, like {{FileName|appleseed_studio_light.appleseed}}, {{FileName|cycles_studio_light.xml}}, {{FileName|luxcore_studio_light.cfg}}, {{FileName|povray_studio_light.pov}} etc.).
# '''Create a rendering project:''' Press the button in the toolbar corresponding to your renderer and select a template suitable for your renderer (you may start with a 'studio' flavour, like {{FileName|appleseed_studio_light.appleseed}}, {{FileName|cycles_studio_light.xml}}, {{FileName|luxcore_studio_light.cfg}}, {{FileName|povray_studio_light.pov}} etc.).
# '''Add views of your objects to your rendering project:''' Select both the objects and the project, and press the {{Button|Add view}} button.
# '''Add views of your objects to your rendering project:''' Select both the objects and the project, and press the {{Button|Add view}} button.
# '''Set your point of view:''' [Navigate in FreeCAD 3D View](https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Manual:Navigating_in_the_3D_view) to the desired position and switch to perspective mode.
# '''Set your point of view:''' [[Manual:Navigating_in_the_3D_view|Navigate in the 3D View]] to the desired position and switch to [[Std_PerspectiveCamera|perspective]] mode.
# '''Render:''' Select your project and press the {{Button|Render}} button in toolbar (also available from project's context menu).
# '''Render:''' Select your project and press the {{Button|Render}} button in toolbar (also available from project's context menu).



Revision as of 17:59, 13 September 2023

Render Workbench icon

Introduction

The Render Workbench let's you produce high-quality images from FreeCAD models, using open-source external rendering engines.

A pure Python workbench, Render is seamlessly integrated in FreeCAD: the whole rendering scene - objects, lighting, materials, camera, etc. - can be described with FreeCAD objects, to be exported to external renderers.

Compared with other approaches based on third-part computer graphics applications, Render aims to:

  • Avoid the user to learn another 3D/computer graphics software: everything you need to know is in FreeCAD.
  • Simplify rendering workflow and relieve user from any intermediate file manipulation - like import, export, scene retouching etc.
  • Make scene configuration persistent and especially prevent rework in an external tool each time the model has been modified.

Supported renderers

At the moment six rendering engines are supported:

  • LuxCoreRender
  • Appleseed
  • Cycles (standalone version)
  • Pov-Ray
  • Intel Ospray Studio
  • Pbrt-v4 (experimental)

Usage

In quick-start mode, after workbench installation has correctly been done, rendering a FreeCAD model is just a 4-steps process:

  1. Create a rendering project: Press the button in the toolbar corresponding to your renderer and select a template suitable for your renderer (you may start with a 'studio' flavour, like appleseed_studio_light.appleseed, cycles_studio_light.xml, luxcore_studio_light.cfg, povray_studio_light.pov etc.).
  2. Add views of your objects to your rendering project: Select both the objects and the project, and press the Add view button.
  3. Set your point of view: Navigate in the 3D View to the desired position and switch to perspective mode.
  4. Render: Select your project and press the Render button in toolbar (also available from project's context menu).

And you should get a first rendering of your model.

More instructions can be found in the GitHub repository or the online help.

Features

Features include, but are not limited to:

  • Lighting: point lights, area lights, sun-sky and preset lighting templates.
  • Cameras.
  • Material management (using usual shaders: matte, glossy, glass, principled etc.) including textures.
  • Batch mode / UI mode.
  • Denoiser.
  • Halt condition (sample per pixel).
  • Meshing control: angular and linear deflections, auto-smoothing.

Links

More info? Just follow the link: https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD-render