Blenderer

Rendering more realistic images and videos

Default
Default tab has the most important properties for rendering. You can simply open the Blenderer addon
and hit render. However, the result will be most likely very dark and dull, so properties and features on
the other tabs must be used for more desirable results.

Property Default Description

Output …\My Commands\Blenderer\ File path to save the rendering result.
Output\Picture.png Warning: Existing file will be overwritten
Samples 100 Number of light ray samples per each pixel.
Higher value gives better, less noisy, result, but
will increase rendering times.
Resolution “<Custom>” List of preset resolutions. Use custom for editing
X and Y resolution manually. Higher resolution
will require longer rendering time.
ResX 384 Horizontal resolution of the output image
ResY 216 Vertical resolution of the output image
Page “Landscape” Portrait setting will flip horizontal and vertical
resolutions in the output image
Render Calls to convert the scene in the Visual
Components into Blender and rendering it with
current settings.
Hint: use low sampling value and resolution for quick test renders.

Lights
The visual components scene is lit up with two default lights. These lights are not exported to Blender.
The render engine will require special light sources that will define their type, color, size and strength.
These light sources can be defined in the Visual Components scene with special components that will be
converted to actual light sources in the render scene. Use the buttons on the Lights tab to create light
components. Light components will be created to a current location of the camera. Light components
won’t have any effect on the lighting in the Visual Components scene. Light source components won’t
be visible in the scene, only the light they emit. However, light sources will be visible in the reflections
and refractions.

Property Default Description

Add Point Light Adds a point light to a current location of the camera
(view). Point light emits light to all directions.
Add Area Light Adds an area light to a current location of the camera
(view) directed to the same direction as the camera.
Area light emits light from one side of the area surface.
Add Spot Light Adds a spotlight to a current location of the camera
(view) directed to the same direction as the camera.
Spot light emits light from a point like source to a
direction defined by a cone.
 Add Sun Light Adds a sun light to a current location of the camera
(view) directed to the same direction as the camera. The
sun light emits one directional light. The location of the
sun light has no effect. Only the orientation.
Default Strength 15000 The strength of the new light when it is added to a scene
(strength of the sun light is the value divided by 10000
=> defaults to 1.5)
Strength value can be later edited as a component
property of each light source component.

Hint: Rotate and navigate camera (view) to different locations around the scene and add light sources.
Use e.g. 3 area lights to create a 3-point studio lighting.

Lights are custom components in the Visual Components scene that can be moved around and even
attached to the moving nodes to record moving lights in animations. Select a light component in the
Visual Components scene to access the component properties. The properties in the light components
are explained below. Not all properties are found in every light source type.

• Size (Point / Spot / Area)

o Size of the light source. The smaller the size, the sharper the casted shadows from this
source.
o Area light has SizeX and SizeY properties separately.
• Strength (Point / Spot / Area / Sun)
o Intensity of the light source. Light source strength is usually in tens of thousands except
for the sun light where e.g. value 2 is already pretty bright.
• R,G,B (Point / Spot / Area / Sun)
o Color of the light can be defined as rgb values, red,green,blue
o e.g. 255, 255, 255 represent perfect white
• Angle (Spot)
o Angle of the spot cone can be defined with the Angle property in degrees.
• Falloff (Point / Spot / Area)
o In real life, the intensity of the light as a function of the distance from the light source
follows an inverse square relationship. So the intensity falls quite rapidly in function of
distance. This can be modified to more easily light up bigger scenes with less light
sources.
o Options:
 Quadratic: Physically accurate falloff with inverse square relationship
 Linear: Light intensity falls linearly in function of distance
 Constant: Light intensity doesn’t depend on the distance (area and spot lights
still emit to specific directions)
o Sunlight doesn’t have falloff option.

Advanced
More detailed rendering optimization or features can be configured on the advanced tab. Some of these
properties may need a bit deeper understanding on ray tracing rendering engines to get the full benefit.
Property Default Description
Caustics False Enables refractive and reflective caustics
rendering. Caustics give more realism when
light is reflecting or refracting thru e.g.
glass. Caustics will generate more noise to
the scene and will require higher sampling
values. You may need to disable Sample
Clamping properties to see the effect and
edit bounce values. It’s recommended to
disable this option in most scenes.
UseFreestyle False Enables freestyle rendering giving a cartoon
like result.
Hint: use only one point light source in the
scene when using freestyle rendering.
CameraFovX 30 Camera Field of View angle (degrees)
defines what angle the camera sees in the
scene. Higher value will result in wider-
angle image. The view in the Visual
Components doesn’t fully respect the
framing in the result image. CameraFovX
defines the horizontal angle of the image.
Hint: use low quality settings for quick test
rendering to see the result image framing
or the “ShowBorder” property.
ShowBorder False Visualizes the current resolution and FOV
setting in the 3d scene with a red wire
frame.
OpenInBlender False When OpenInBlender is enabled and
rendering is called on the Default or
Animation tab, the converted scene is
opened in Blender software. Useful feature
for users familiar with the Blender user
interface.
RenderDevice “GPU” Choose between CPU and GPU rendering.
Rendering will be done with CPU even if
the GPU is chosen if the GPU rendering is
not set up in the Blender User Preferences
inside the Blender user interface. Launch
standalone Blender instance to edit the
user preferences.
Once setup is done the render device can
be chosen for each render using this
RenderDevice property. Usually GPU
rendering is faster, but CPU rendering may
support rendering of larger scenes if GPU
memory is limited.
SampleClampDirect 2 Clamps the sample value for one single
sample. This will reduce fireflies (bright
noise) in the result image. Zero value
disables clamping. Small non-zero values
gives the most noticeable result but will
make result image a bit darker and some
details may be lost.
Hint: Use value 2 
SampleClampIndirect 2 Clamps the sample value for one single
sample. This will reduce fireflies (bright
noise) in the result image. Zero value
disables clamping. Small non-zero values
gives the most noticeable result but will
make result image a bit darker and some
details may be lost.
Hint: Use value 2
TransparentMaxBounces 2 Number of maximum light ray bounces thru
transparent materials.
Hint: Use small value (0) if transparencies
are not important in the scene. => Faster
render
Hint2: Use higher value if there are multiple
transparent items in the scene that can be
seen thru each other.
TransparentMinBounces 0 See above. Minimum number of
transparent bounces.
MaxBounces 4 Maximum amount of bounces per light ray.
Hint: with simple non-reflective and non-
transparent materials this value can be
lowered for faster render times.
MinBounces 0 Minimum number of light ray bounces per
sample.
DiffuseBounces 2 Number of bounces generated by a diffuse
reflection.
GlossyBounces 2 Number of bounces generated by a
specular glossy reflection.
TransmissionBounces 8 Number of bounces thru transparent glass
like materials. Better result requires usually
higher value than diffuse and glossy.
Hint: Set to zero for faster rendering if
transparencies are not important in the
scene.
VolumeBounces 0 Number of bounces in volume. Most of the
bounces in the scene happen on surfaces. If
mist is enabled the light can also bounce
inside the world volume.
 Hint: Use higher value (e.g. 8) when using
mist in the scene.
AOBounces 0 After number of AOBounces the rays still
continue to bounce but instead of using
costly material shaders the bounces are
calculated using the environment map in
the scene. Hint: Improve rendering times by
setting this value to e.g. 2. Or by setting the
global MaxBounces to 2
Denoising 0.5 Denoising is a post processing procedure to
reduce noise in the result image. Setting
this value to 0 will skip denoising
completely, allowing rendering faster and
showing better image details, but with a
cost of noise that must be reduced by
higher sampling value. Denoising value
must be between 0…1.
Hint: smaller denoising requires higher
sampling count. Use denoising and use
lower sampling for faster overall rendering
time
Hint: 0.5 is a good guess for most scenes.
TileX 256 Image is rendered tile by tile. TileX is the
resolution of each tile horizontally.
Hint: 256 or 512 gives a good performance
for GPU rendering. Use e.g. 16 for CPU
rendering
TileY 256 Image is rendered tile by tile. TileY is the
resolution of each tile vertically.
Hint: 256 or 512 gives a good performance
for GPU rendering. Use e.g. 16 for CPU
rendering
Hint2: prefer values like 8,16,32,64,128,…
Hint3: same values for x and y is optimal in
most setups
Materials “Default” With “Default” mode the scene materials
are converted from Visual Components
scene to Blender scene as is.
With “Write To Table” mode the scene
material values are written to a
materials.csv file which is saved to the
Blenderer command folder.
With “Read From Table” mode the material
definitions are read from a materials.csv
file stored in the Blenderer command
folder. Materials that are not defined in the
 csv are converted directly from Visual
Components scene as is.
Hint: Set Materials property first to Write
To Table mode and render the scene (when
rendering begins it can be aborted. The file
is already generated at this point). Then
open the materials.csv file and edit the
material definitions and save the file. Then
Change the Materials property to Read
From Table mode and render again with
the materials defined in the csv file. This
makes it easier and faster to edit the render
materials without editing the materials in
the Visual Components layout.
Hint:CustomData supports currently adding
noise displacement maps to materials.
Use value: NOISE/<scale>/<strenth>
E.G: NOISE/300/5
NOTE: image paths for textures are not fully
supporter in the 2018_06_01 version of the
plugin.
TableDelimiter “;” CSV delimiter for the materials.csv table.
Hint: usually semi-colon on European
Windows and comma on American/Asian
Windows.
DepthOfFieldNode *Null* Camera depth of field can be focused to a
center of a node. If set to *Null* the
camera DOF is infinite (i.e. all objects are in
focus).
Hint: DepthOfFieldNode can be a moving
node to create cool cinematographic effects
in animations.
DepthOfFieldRadius 50 The smaller the value, the larger the depth
of field area is. Greater value will make
bigger area blurry.
Mist 0 Amount of mist (fog) in the scene. Increase
volumetric bounces for better result. Mist
will also cause more noise in the image, so
sampling value may need to be higher.
0 = no mist
1 = 100% mist (pitch black scene)
Hint: Very small amount of mist usually
gives the best result. Even less than 1% (i.e.
0.005)
Animation
Animations can be also rendered. Animations are rendered to a series of image files that can be stitched
together into a video with 3rd party software. Rendering animation requires recording the scene before
calling rendering.

Workflow goes like this:

• Check RecAnimation checkbox

• Set start time (in seconds)
• Set end time (in seconds)
• Define StepSize (e.g. 0.04s => 25fps)
• Play simulation until RecAnimation check box is automatically disabled
• Hit “RenderAnimation”
• Animation is rendered frame by frame into image files. File path is defined on the Default tab.
Animation frame images will get an ascending numeric post fix (e.g. Picture00001.png)

Property Default Description

RecAnimation False Set this True before running the
simulation to record the scene
for animation rendering.
Start 1s Start time of the recording in
seconds.
End 1.5s End time of the recording in
seconds.
StepSize 0.04s Defines the animation frame
rate. 0.04s => 25fps, 0.02s =>
50fps
Warning: recording is executed
on OnRender event in Visual
Components. Don’t change the
simulation speed during
recording and don’t navigate
the 3d world.
RenderAnimation Launch rendering by hitting this
button after the recording is
done.
Hint: Check the Output panel in
Visual Components if any errors
or warnings are printed

Env
Environment map has two roles. It can show up in the rendered image as the background image and it
can be used as a “light source” in the scene. Background can be set to be a plain RGB color or a HDRI
environment map image (Google “HDRI map” for examples). Prefer very high resolution and high
contrast maps for better results. The example map shipped with the Blenderer addon is quite poor
quality both in contrast and in resolution.
 Property Default Description
Background Image Choose between Image or ColorRGB.
Depending on the selection either Image or
ColorRGB property is shown.
Image …\My Commands\Blenderer\ Set an environment image map. Most
Lights\Evn_room.bmp commonly used image formats are supported
including *.hdr.
Environment image is wrapped around the
scene with spherical projection so normal
planar images are not applicable.
ColorRGB Vector(1,1,1) Color defined as RGB values between 0…1.
Default value X1, Y1, Z1 represent white and
can be understood as R=255 G=255 B=255
Strength 0.3 Strenth of the light emitted from the map.
Higher value lights up the scene more.
Setting this to 0 will disable Env map as a
light source
Visible True Show or hide background. Map can be used
as a light source even if the map is not shown
as the background in the output render.
Floor
In real life, light bounces from the floor. So even if the light sources in a room are usually in the ceiling, a
lot of light is bounced back from the floor lighting the objects from below. So having a floor in the render
scene is quite important for more realistic result. The default floor in the Visual Components scene is not
converted to the render scene. Render scene floor can be easily configured on the floor tab.

Property Default Description

Visible True Disable this if the render scene floor is
not needed.
Hint: If the floor already exists in the
scene as 3d geometry it is better to
disable the render scene floor completely
BorderSize 2000mm Floor size is automatically calculated
from the scene contents so that the floor
covers all the items in the scene.
BorderSize defines how much the floor
overshoots every direction around the
items in the scene.
Style ConcreteLight Presets of floor styles. Changing this will
overwrite the existing ColorTexture and
BumpTexture property values. Custom
floor style can be defined by simply
setting any texture (image) files to the
ColorTexture and/or BumpTexture files.
ColorTexture …\My Commands\Blenderer\ Image file for texturing the floor
Textures\ConcreteLight.jpg
BumpTexture …\My Commands\Blenderer\ Image file for creating surface shape to
Textures\ConcreteNormal.jpg the floor. Use normal map type bump
map. Rgb values of the each pixel in the
normal map defines a XYZ normal vector.
Completely blue image (all pixels 0,0,1)
represents completely flat surface.
TextureSize 1200mm Size of the texture tile on the floor
geometry. Texture is repeated on the
floor. Prefer tileable textures.