Rendering Realtime Effects to File
The options on the Render Engine property page of the Render Options property editor allow you to select a renderer other than mental ray to output your scene. You can choose any of the Realtime display modes as renderers, allowing you to output your realtime effects to file.
The rendered frames show the scene as seen by the pass camera and displayed in any 3D view whose viewpoint is that of the pass camera.
Before you activate a hardware renderer, you should know the following:
• Frames are rendered in accordance with the options set on the Output and Format tabs, where applicable. For example, the Image Filename option on the Output tab specifies the output file’s name and path, regardless of the active render engine.
• All scene elements displayed in the 3D views are rendered, except for reference objects like the grid and axes.
For more information about the Render Engine options, see Setting Hardware Rendering Options in the Rendering guide.
To output realtime effects to file
1. Choose Render > Render > Options from the Render toolbar to open the Render Options property editor for the current pass (the current pass is the one displayed in the Pass text box on the Render toolbar).
2. Click the Render Engine tab and choose one of the following from the Render Engine list:
- OpenGL: outputs to file the OpenGL rendered scene as seen in Realtime Shaders > OpenGL display mode.
- DirectX9: outputs to file the DirectX rendered scene as seen in Realtime Shaders > DirectX9 display mode.
3. If you wish to override the 3D views’ current background color, as defined in the Scene Colors property editor (see Setting Scene Colors in the Interface and Tools guide for details), activate the Set Background Color option. Then use the RGBA sliders to set the new background color.
When you output the scene, the rendered images uses the new background color, but the 3D views’ background color is unaffected.
4. If you haven’t done so already, set the options on the Output tab (see the previous section) and the Format tab (see the next section) before rendering the scene.
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