Just noticed a button that I don't think I have ever seen before in the render box...apply? Was it there before 15e? What does it do?

A short note about the Apply button was added by the feature requester after the release.
As near as I can tell (haven't experimented much) hitting 'Apply' locks in the render dialog box's current settings. Settings should remain the same until you 'Apply' a different setting.

Again... I haven't tested very far yet.

That makes sense, and is a good feature! Hopefully the settings that get 'locked' are locked to that PROJECT file and not to A:M in general... I find that if I am working on 2 projects...one a HD res and the other a small web res with toon render, as I go back and forth from each to the other the render settings and file info get confused- so hopefully this sorts THAT out on a 'per-PROJECT' basis.

I just noticed the option for render quality to be "real-time" ... please tell me that's new ...

please please please. I hate getting old.

Looks like wireframe to me ... but there is still the wireframe, shaded, shaded & wired, and final options.

I have been using Apply a lot recently. I believe all it does is make the settings in the render box the current render settings. This is very useful because previously if you changed a bunch settings in the render dialog and then closed without rendering you lost all your changes. I have been using Apply because I keep forgetting to change the number of rays cast by my lights to match the number of passes I am using, until I am in the render dialog.

I asked Steffen for it and he was very kind to implement it.
It is meant to save the settings in the renderdialog even if you afterwards hit cancle...
I had the problem that I had a scene which was containting of several shots. I made some changes to it and then opened the renderdialog, setted the output-path, renderingoptions etc. and after that I saw, that for example an object which shouldnt be visible was visible, or that I used the wrong camera, etc.

Now I had to hit render to save the settings (which is very annoying if you have to cancle that in the next second, because it can take some time) or I had to hit cancle, do my changes and do all the renderingsettings again. Very annoying.

The Apply-Button helps here: Just hit apply, then you can hit cancel and do your changes and after that you can just hit the renderbutton again and the settings are still there.

The old way is still there so: If you change something and hit render it will although change the rendersettings to that, even if you didnt hit apply.

*Fuchur*

But the "Applied" settings aren't locked to the project, they're still there if you open another prj I think.

Yes. And therein lies my confusion. THAT, and the fact that if you turn ON hair in the project but OFF in the renders (or vicey-versey) you get unexpectant results... you really need to stay on your toes. I've already started a render several times ( I have projects going on all over the place...) only to find it is being rendered via the PROJECT settings, and I'll remember OH YEAH- I switched that the other day when I was working on that OTHER job...

Beware. I've already gotten into the habit of waiting to see the 1st frame of a render before I will walk away. It would SUCK to let a 16-pass render go the whole weekend on the default 'targa' settings if I had thought I was using the camera settings... I don't know what an easy solution would be because I am still confused by the problem, but I 'think' it may be as simple as putting the "Use render settings from A) project B ) the camera" dialogue in the RENDER dialogue as well as in the project dialogue... check-me if I am wrong.

It can be confusing and there are about 5 ways to save Render Data too.
I love having the options though!

I've gotten in the habit (as much as possible) to try to always render to the same location.
This helps tremendously as it subconsciously clues me in that if I do change the location I am probably using the camera settings.

I'm still refining a workflow as I tend to render from all over the place (modeling window, action, choreography... anywhere that'll get the shot/look I want).

I was going to add some info on Render setting here but I don't want to further confuse anyone.
I'll try to make it a tutorial instead.

Regarding the 'Apply' button, like you I've grown accustomed to waiting for the first frame to appear. (A I tend to render to low resolution this is no doubt a lot quicker than for your renders)

But... and this is a big but... I usually check ALL SETTINGS in the Render Dialog Panel these days as I tend change them every time I render.
Once they are good-to-go if I think I'll use the settings again I'll try to whack that "Apply" button before I render.

I am also trying to standardize on one image formats.
PNG is my default image type as of this date as it works great to re-purpose images for the web.
Quicktime (.MOV format) has gone all wonky on me of late so I've been rendering to sequential images more than usual. (No sweat... will just have to fix it later).


Note: If something were added to the Render Dialog to clue us in on perhaps it could be a timed message box that states... "Rendering from: Camera" then gives us 5-10 seconds to Abort/Terminate the render before the message goes away. (Note: A:M could still be doing rendering stuff...loading everything in memory... rendering preview images... whatever... behind the scenes. Then for many average renders... they'd seem instantaneous.)

The biggest mistake I make is constantly overwriting render files. If you don't change the file save settings in the render panel it doesn't warn you that you are rendering over top of a rendered file from another project. Luckily everything I render is backed up in like two or three different places after it's rendered... but it's still a bit confusing... I once couldn't find a render because I had no idea what it was called or where it was. I had to search on the date/time before I figured it out.

-vern

I plan to look again at Glenn Anthofer's 'Render Done' utility as for awhile I used it to continually render to one place.
Once the render was done it'd launch a batchfile that would copy the folder into another place (the method I liked best was to name the folder as the date... format: YYYYMMMDDHHMMSS. A bit too much of a hack I admit and it doesn't work on a MAC. Now that the 'Apply' button makes rendering more sticky I really need to try RenderDone again.

Edit: The danger of course is that if something fails... you may have overwritten a whole lot o' files!!!

I've been rendering again to one place a lot lately.
I have a folder inside a directory named RenderFolder. After a render, I copy and paste the folder into the same place via a quick Ctrl C/Ctrl V. If the folders name was 'Output' then Windows names it 'Copy of Output' automatically. Subsequent copies produce 'Copy of Output(1)... 'Copy of Output(2)... and so forth and so on. Later I switch hats and go into Editor Mode where I rename and organize whats been rendered.

Why go through all this trouble? I really don't like rendering.
I like seeing them perty images though.

With standardization on PNG images I've been developing an external workflow that helps me better see the images as they are rendered... right inside A:M. Some of it is even... dare I say it... Change your Pants friendly!


Edit: So my point here (almost forgot) is that I don't care if I overwrite files. My workflow automatically overwrites them unless I decide otherwise.
Obviously this works best with simple/low resolution renders. It'd take entirely too long to copy huge renders to other locations on the fly.

For me right now, I'm keeping two identical versions of my project on the Mac and PC. I do most of the work on the PC but transfer to the mac because I do a lot of post editing there with renders and I also do all my photoshop decal work on the Mac. I suppose I could keep it in one place but I prefer not working "over a network" with files (I've had problems with corrupted saves to a server) and this forces me to keep an extra back up besides the regular back ups. Like I said it saved me a couple of times already when I overwrote a render on the PC. I still had the original on the Mac.

-vern

I guess everyone's got their own workarounds. I've just gotten into the habit of checking ALL my render settings every time since I render to different locations depending on whether I'm doing client work or personal. I also often render different frame ranges and if you're rendering to tga's the first one needs to be named with the starting frame number. I just don't take anything for granted. Shadows? Toon render? I go down the list and check every setting. It keeps me from going crazy. Or crazIER.

YES! Me, too! I especially ran into this when I was doing TAOAM, and switching between projects frequently.