Get your science in Shape
Render Module
Properties Panel: Camera
Properties Panel: Camera
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The Camera parameters include various rotation angles in different coordinate systems. The are either observer oriented, such as position angle (PA) or inclination. Or, they are rotations around the Cartesian world coordinate axes.
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One can change from Orthogonal camera projection (on by default) to perspective camera.
Furthermore various filters or "modifiers" can be applied to the data prior to the final render or after the render. These modifiers are discussed in more details below.
Scene size: The width of the computing domain in terms of physical units, which by default is meters (m). This number corresponds to half the voxel size assigned to the Resolution parameter above. The physical domain runs from -(scene size):+(scene size).
Scene center: The center of the cubic computational domain may be shifted in the physical scene that might be larger than the rendering domain. Setting a smaller domain with a shifted center may be useful for testing purposes or for achieving higher resolution outputs for certain regions.
HD: The high-definition (HD) render is activated with this flag. It does not use a predefined cubic voxel grid and works similar to a ray-tracing engine that integrates to the pixel plane. If there are computations that depend on light sources, such as dust scattering, it is computed along the way. This may require more time, but is much less memory intensive. Therefore higher resolutions can be achieved. Fast renders, e.g. for camera animation movies, is not possible, however, since the some information is not stored for quick rendering from the precomputed voxel grid.
Scatter Grid Size: When the HD render mode is switched on and scattering or photo-ionization processes are to be calculated, a sub-grid needs to be set that comfortably fits into RAM, but is as large as practical to avoid potential artifacts at grid limits. Recommendable is about half of the size that you can fit, if HD is off.
Save grid: The grid data used for the final render step are retained in memory. This allows the Autorender (see below) to work. It requires more memory though and hence limit the achievable resolution smaller than with this option off. So, if you are doing quick tests or plan on rendering camera animations, then this option is convenient to be on.
Auto render: If the HD is off or the Save grid flag is on, then data of the full grid have been saved and can be used to quickly render the scene for different camera views and animations. When you change the parameters of the camera the rendering updates automatically. The effect is not "real time" and may take a few seconds, depending on the resolution.
Use window: For quick render in HD mode that require only a small portion of the image to be rendered, you can set a window using the Window Button above the image. Click on the icon with the square and then drag out a rectangle with the left mouse-button pressed. If the Use window flag is on, only this region will be rendered. This reduces the rendering times during model development when it is sufficient to see only part of the model.
Overlay: Occasionally it is convenient to retain the previous image or images and add progressive images together. This is useful for diagnostics or simply as a nice "special effect.