Previewing Your Render: The Render View Window

The Render View window automatically opens when you test-render a frame, as you’ve already seen in your work through this book. To open it manually, choose Window ⇒ Rendering Editors ⇒ Render View. Your current scene renders in the Render View window. Figure 11-9 shows the important icons in this window:

Redo Previous Render Renders the last-rendered view panel.

Render Region Renders only the selected portion of an image. To select a portion of an image, click within the image in the Render View window, and drag a red box around a region.

Open Render Settings Window Opens the Render Settings window (also known as the Render Globals window in previous versions of Maya).

Display RGB Channels Displays the full color of the image.

Display Alpha Channel Displays only the alpha matte of the render as a black-and-white image.

Display Real Size Resets the image size to 100 percent to make sure the image displays properly. When the Render View window is resized, or when you select a new render resolution, the image renders to fit the window, and the image is resized if needed. If your render looks blocky, make sure the Render View window is displaying at real size before adjusting the options in the Render Settings window.

Select Renderer Lets you select the rendering method. This is the same as selecting it in the Render Settings window.

Information Readout At the bottom of the Render View window is a readout of information about the frame rendered. This information tells you the resolution, renderer used, frame number, render time, and camera used to render. This readout is a huge help in comparing different render settings and different frames as you progress in your work, especially when you keep images in the buffer (as explained later).

Figure 11-9: The Render View window

Saving/Loading an Image

Although you typically use the Render View window to test a scene, you can also use it to save single frames by choosing File ⇒ Save Image to save in all Maya’s supported image formats. Likewise, choose File ⇒ Open Image to display any previously rendered image file in this window. If your task in Maya is to create a single frame, this is the best way to render and save it.

Keep/Remove Image

The Render View window is a prime place to see adjustments to various parts of your scene. You can store images in its buffer by clicking the Keep Image icon. When you do, a scroll bar appears at the bottom of the window, and you can scroll through any saved images. This is handy for making a change, rendering it, and scrolling back and forth between the old saved image and the new render to make sure the change is to your liking. You can store a number of images in the buffer. For a faster way to preview changes, use IPR rendering as discussed next.

IPR Rendering

Figure 11-10: IPR rendering lets you fine-tune your textures and lighting with near real-time feedback.

As you saw in Chapter 7, a fast way to preview changes to your scene is to use Maya’s Interactive Photorealistic Rendering (IPR). After you IPR-render a view panel, specify the region you want to tune by dragging a box around that area of the image in the Render View window. Maya updates that region every time you make a shader or lighting change to the scene. Figure 11-10 shows the fruit still life as an IPR render as the color and specular levels are being fine-tuned.

IPR is perfect for finding just the right lighting and specular levels. It will, however, register raytracing elements such as refractions and true reflections only if the scene is set to render through mental ray for Maya. Overall, IPR quality is fairly close to that of a full render while still allowing you to watch your tuning in near real time.