Hello creators. My name is Ann and
welcome to the rendering tutorial. When your model is finished, it’s time to
render it to get photorealistic images. Go to Menu - Render and select Render.
In this window, you can preview your image with Interactive Rendering. Click
here to start it or use this button. Once you have a preview you can start
preparing your scene for rendering. So first thing first make sure that
you’re in the Thick textured surface mode. I don’t, so my fabrics look thin. Switch to it
in the top left panel, this icon, and restart Interactive render. Click on a Stop button and
then on Interactive Render again. You’ll need to restart it from time to time to see changes
here. Now thickness is visible. If you don’t see the seams at all, turn on Show seamlines here.
You can also use this preview during modeling, to see how your materials and fabrics look.
Displacement maps and some material types can only be visible in a render window. For example,
these Material types with the “Render only” sign. If you want to preview and render fast you need
to have Windows and a good Nvidia graphics card. Clo3D uses V-Ray renderer and Nvidia’s
CUDA acceleration technology only. Unfortunately, Mac doesn’t support Nvidia, so the
only option left for Mac users is a CPU rendering. I checked the render speed on my CPU and
GPU and it was on average 2.5 faster on GPU, which is huge. So the first step for Nvidia
users is to open Render Properties and change a render engine to the GPU (CUDA).
If you are going to use CPU anyway you can notice that seams don’t look realistic. Looks
like they have inverted Normal Maps. I found a way how to fix it. Select all seams in a 2D
window with B - Edit Sewing Tool - and you’ll see a 3D seamline section in the Property
Editor. You need to change this Normal Map. Click on the first button and select the
second map. Here is the difference. However, they still look different on the GPU rendering,
I’d even say they look better on GPU. The next step is to choose the resolution. Let’s
open Image Properties. We will get back to the Render Properties a little bit later. At the
right panel, you can see the image size. You need to define dimensions of the image - width,
and height. I want to have the final render in high resolution 2K, for example, but I don’t need
it so high for the preview stage when I check my fabrics, rotate the camera, and set up a scene
and lighting. So, I'll set it at 720 by 720 to speed up image updating. Set the image size to
the adequate minimum depending on your computer. Also, zoom in the image with
this button “Fit in view”. Now you can start adding custom lighting,
adjust the camera and background. Lighting, I believe, affects the photorealistic result
the most. In the Light Properties, open it, you can see the dome light settings. It’s an
environmental light that is not so realistic on its own. You can add additional
light sources using these buttons. I’ve created custom lighting earlier so now
I’ll open it here with this “Open” button. Here we go. The image looks a bit interesting now.
The next tip is related to the Camera. You can rotate the camera in 3d window to choose the
right shot for you. But if you want to take several shots and don’t lose the previous positions
you can save them in the Custom Views tab. Go to Menu - Display - Viewpoint - Custom View.
Here it is. I’ve already saved some views here. To make a new one - choose a position
and click on a camera button here. It will be added at the bottom of the
list. If you want to render all these views one by one - go to the Image Properties
and change Current view to Custom views here. In the Camera Properties, you can
adjust camera position and add physical camera properties to the camera.
Then you can change a background in the Image Properties. Here. You can choose any color, image
texture, or turn on transparency. Also, there is a library of textures, or rather masks. Click on
this button and you’ll see them. You can apply these masks on a solid color background to get
some interesting effects. For example Gradation or Vignette. I’ll choose this one. It corresponds
to the light source's position in my scene. And now we’re approaching the most
important part of rendering - speed. What if I tell you that this image can be rendered
in 30 min, 10 min, or 40 sec depending on the Render Properties? The first one is rendered on
CPU, the second one on GPU, both with maximum render properties. The third is rendered on
GPU but with optimized render properties. As you see the quality is almost the same. I
believe you’d like to render in 40 sec then in 30 min, wouldn’t you?
So let’s see how we can optimize it. Open the render properties.
Noise Threshold significantly impacts render time. It defines how much noise will be on the image.
Look. Clo3D renders the image in steps, gradually adding details and reducing noise until it reaches
the target noise level or runs out of time. For example, if I set the noise level to 100 it’ll
take 30 sec to render this image. If I set it to 50 it’ll take 40 sec. 10 noise will take 1 min
20 sec and 1 noise will take an extremely long time - 9 min 14 sec. Each of these results took
less than 20 min, so Clo3d renders the image until it reaches the target noise level. If I decrease
time to 1 minute and leave 1 noise threshold, Clo3d will stop rendering when it runs out of time
and leave more noise on the image. In my case, it roughly matches to 10 Noise Threshold.
The only thing is when you set 1 minute it will actually take 1 min and a few
seconds, up to 20 for some reason. You can notice that there isn’t so much difference
between the lowest and the highest Noise Threshold. I believe it’s due to the textures.
They create a kind of grainy effect and the noise isn’t so visible. So I can save time a bit by
picking the highest Noise Threshold. Usually, I set time and noise to a minimum to render
images. But if you render an animation - it’s worth picking the shortest render time and
setting the noise manually to save every second. If we take a look at this dress, you may notice
the noise better. In 100 Noise Threshold and 10 sec, we have a very grainy image. 50 noise
and 13 sec looks better but still grainy, 10 noise and 31 sec looks good. 1 noise and almost
4 min is definitely not a great choice. There is hardly any difference between 10 and 1 Noise
Threshold and such a huge difference in time. So the point is to pick a sufficient Noise Threshold
or set a max time. Whatever is easier for you. You will need more time or a lower Noise
Threshold to get a clean image for translucent, transparent materials, fur, and
if you increase the resolution. Again render time also depends on
your computer and render engine so your results may differ from mine.
Let’s move on with the other settings. Check CPU Supporting to use CPU along with GPU.
It will slightly speed up rendering. Check Low GPU priority if you want to use your Graphics
card for multiple purposes at the same time, but it’ll increase the render time.
Seam Puckering Intensity means how noticeable your seams will be, so it basically
controls the Normal Map intensity for seams. It doesn’t affect the render time.
The quality of light and materials also affect the render time but unlike the noise,
it’s not necessary to make them Very high quality. The difference between Low and Very High is
too little in most cases. Clo3D manual says that we need to increase the quality if we:
Render white fur. I agree, there is a difference. To express light reflections more realistically
when textures are added to the studio environment such as the wall and floor. I don’t quite
understand what it means, but I added a mirror to the scene and the reflection looks better on
a Very High material and Very High light quality. Maybe there are some other cases when we need to
make it higher but in most cases as well as for my image Low quality is great.
To sum up, do not increase render time when it’s useless.
When you are ready to render, get back to the image properties and
increase the resolution. I’ll make it 2K. Choose the file path here. You can name it or
use the project name. Select the image format and press the render button. And
that’s it. Here is the final render. Thank you for the likes and comments
that you leave. I really appreciate it. See you in the next videos. Bye!
