About Rendering

The display option enables you to select a color space.

The following option is available:

Option	Description
Color Space	Keeps color consistency. It can be useful for large color scale screens. Important: Before using this option, calibrate your screen with a colorimeter hardware.

If you select the custom resolution, the Width and Height options are available.

To change the width and the height simultaneously and keep the image ratio, click .

You can optimize the rendering computation through the Stellar render engine. This engine is equivalent to the Photoreal engine but is developed by Dassault Systèmes.

Stellar options are available only when the Stellar render mode is activated in the Interactive - Rendering section. By default, the render settings are defined so that a good rendering is expected in an average scenario (like outdoor or indoor rendering).

The active render settings, that is, the last selected preset and the last edited custom parameters are stored in the preferences. This means that they are restored when the app restarts.

You can apply either ready-to-use, or user-defined presets with different quality levels. These presets are for users who are not familiar with rendering parameters, by allowing them to quickly select the most adapted configuration. When a preset is selected, the parameters are tuned accordingly.

Profile	Description
Outdoor	Optimizes settings for outdoor scenes.
Interior	Optimizes settings for interiors.
Caustics	Optimizes settings for caustics.
Custom	Applies customized settings.
User preset	Applies customized settings saved in user presets. The procedure for managing user presets is the same as in the Visual Quality panel.

For advanced users who are already familiar with rendering techniques or the Stellar engine, the following options are available. However, some of these options are not available when GPU is activated.

• Accumulative Settings
• Global Illumination
• Downsampling

Accumulative Settings

Option	Description
Target quality (dB)	Defines the quality of the converged image as peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR). Low values (between 10 and 20) result in noisy images and a quickly finishing convergence and are suitable for preview rendering. High values (between 40 and 70) result in images without apparent noise but with a convergence time that might be very long. Such values are suitable for final frame rendering.
Samples per frame	Defines how many samples per pixel are traced before displaying the first ray tracing image. 1 enables maximum interactivity. Set to values above 1 makes the first image less noisy at the cost of lower interactivity. Recommendation: Use values above 1 only for compute setups with high compute power like multi-GPU and cluster setups. The value of this option varies exponentially (1, 2, 4, 8, and so on).
Max sample luminance	Lets you activate or deactivate the maximum sample luminance option. If you activate this option, some parts of the computed images may be darker than they should be in reality. In return, image noise converges more quickly.
Base value	Defines the clamping value of result pixels. Lower values result in faster convergence but darken bright effects like highlights or emissive objects. This value is used as maximum sample luminance value for sample paths consisting of many ray bounces. For paths including just few ray bounces, or only specular bounces, higher max sample luminance values are used.
Filtering	Lets you activate or deactivate the Gauss anti-aliasing filter.
Strength	Defines the Gauss filter curve used for smoothing. The higher the value, the smoother the result. This option is available only when Filtering is activated.
Denoiser	Converts a noisy image into a smooth image and improves convergence time for a rendering. Click Denoiser, and then use Start iteration option to specify after how many frames the denoiser is enabled. Recommendation: Enable denoising only if the amount of video memory (VRAM) is above 8 GB. The Denoiser option can be activated if your GPU is: a NVIDIA GPU with a compatible NVIDIA driver installed. generation Maxwell or newer (for example, Maxwell, Volta, Turing, Ampere). Note: About the denoiser: There is a kind of artistically painted style effect in the early stages, but this effect is removed when the image has converged more. Enabling the denoiser automatically grays out the Denoiser option in the Visual Quality Manager.
Start iteration	Applies the denoiser after the specified number of iterations.

Global Illumination

Option	Description
Max path depth	Defines the maximum number of ray bounces.
Light Tracing	Optimizes simulation of caustics effects and indirect illumination. Recommendation: Use this option for scenes with small light emitters or very glossy surfaces, and for interior scenes. Clear this option in standard scenes for faster interactivity and convergence.
Fast subsurface scattering	Lets you switch between fast and accurate subsurface scattering simulation (SSS). Fast SSS converges significantly faster but is only an approximation to reality. Recommendation: Use it for concept design and marketing. Accurate SSS is physically-based but converges a lot slower. Recommendation: Use it for concept validation and light visualization.
Ray offset (mm)	Specifies the offset from a ray hit point at which new rays start.

Downsampling factor

Lets you enhance the rendering performance by applying a downsampling factor to the image displayed on screen.

The image is generated with a lower resolution to have better performance but with a lower visual quality (the image looks slightly blurry).

You can render images either in real-time time with the default visualization, in interactive ray tracing, or in batch mode.

• Real time uses rasterization techniques.
• Interactive ray tracing uses optimized ray tracing techniques.
• Batch rendering lets you benefit from the full power of GI techniques implemented by the Stellar engine.

The real preview of your product aims at being as close as possible to reality but the results always look more realistic in batch mode.

Below is a list of differences that you can expect when preparing your rendered images.

	Effect	Real-Time Visualization	Stellar - Interactive	Stellar - Batch
Material	Glass Material	No refraction	Correct	Correct
	Colored Glass	Colored but no absorption	Correct	Correct
	Anisotropic Material	Simplified	Correct	Correct
	Emissive Material	Simplified	Correct	Correct
	Flakes	Simplified	Correct	Correct
	Subsurface Scattering	Simplified	Correct	Correct
Lighting	Reflections	Simplified	Correct	Correct
	Light Interaction	None	Correct	Correct
	Shadows	Simplified	Correct	Correct
	Default Ambiences (RMB)	As specified	As specified	Converted to HDRi
Camera	Depth of Field	Simplified	Correct	Correct
	Glow	Simplified	Simplified	Correct

The Iray options help you specify options for Photoreal and Interactive (IRT) render engines.

Warning: In 2022x, these engines are only available through a variable. From 2023x onward, they will not be available anymore.

For Photoreal:

Photoreal Option	Description
Maximum ray bounces	Defines the maximum number of ray bounces. Important: A low number of ray bounces may produce black areas on reflective and refractive parts.
Instancing	Iray supports two ways of handling scene geometry: flattening and instancing. Several modes are available to control how and which geometry is instanced. Off: all scene geometry is flattened into a single memory block. Geometry that is instanced multiple times in the scene is duplicated. This mode almost always leads to higher memory use than when defining Instancing to On, but often yields higher rendering performance. On: all instanced geometry only exists once, which means that input scene instances are also instances in the rendering core. This may yield a significantly lower memory footprint, but may incur significant runtime costs, especially if the geometric extent of the instances overlaps. Iray also applies incremental object transform updates. This mode significantly reduces the scene preprocessing runtime overhead when moving objects around dynamically. Auto: Iray automatically detects and decides which objects to instance to reduce the memory footprint, and accelerate object transform updates. Input scene instances are usually all instanced in the rendering core, unless there is a significant downside for memory or performance. This mode may significantly reduce the scene preprocessing runtime overhead when repeatedly changing the transformation of a group, or (flattened) instance.
Texture Compression	Activates or deactivates texture compression. Off: no compression. Medium: an average compression is applied. High: a high compression is applied.
Boost Caustics	Renders caustics more accurately but with some performance penalty.
Apply denoiser after iteration	Converts a noisy image into a smooth image and improves convergence time for a rendering. Different denoisers are used, depending on the render engine: Denoiser 1 for Photoreal or IRT, real time, or batch Denoiser 2 for Stellar in interactive mode Image Quality Speed Hardware Denoisers 1 and 2 provide equivalent quality. Denoiser 1 is the fastest. Denoiser 2 is slightly slower. Denoisers 1 and 2 are GPU-only.

The following option is available for Interactive:

Interactive Option	Description
Path space filtering	Applies a filter (the image is blurred) that removes noise.

The hardware options let you select the render mode.

You can select hardware for the following render modes:

• Stellar: a high quality, physically-based render engine designed by Dassault Systèmes that you can use during the design phase in another app than Live Rendering.
• Photoreal: a high quality, physically-based, path-tracing render mode generates images featuring complex global illumination effects.
• Interactive: uses faster but less accurate rendering algorithms than the Photoreal render mode.

The miscellaneous options help you specify the logo and navigation options.

Option	Description
Insert logo in saved images	Adds a logo to the lower-right corner of saved images. Logos are located in ..\install_directory\win_b64\resources\graphic\logos. You can replace them.
Navigation	Defines the quality of the image, depending on your hardware. The higher the quality, the slower the performance while moving an object. If your hardware is not powerful, decrease the quality to maintain a fluid navigation.