The Render Animation dialog can be called up by clicking the Render Animation button on the main button bar. This button should only be used as long as the current texture is animated.
The dialog's controls are organized into two sections: "Render Settings" and "Output."
Render Settings Section
This section controls how much animation data will be generated during rendering.
Option |
Description |
Render Resolution |
Specifies the dimensions of each frame of the animation in pixels. |
Anti-Alias |
With anti-aliasing active, Genetica will take more than one sample per pixel, resulting in increased image quality. Please note that anti-aliasing will significantly increase render time and memory consumption. You may therefore want to use anti-aliasing sparingly during test renders. |
Render Color Only |
Color-only renders ignore highlights and shadows, and are most useful when used in combination with effect maps. Please refer to the Using Effect Maps tutorial for an example of how this button can be used. |
Render Effect Maps |
Activating this option will cause any effect maps that are present in the animation to also be rendered. The Using Effect Maps tutorial has more details. |
Number of Frames |
Specifies the number of frames that will be rendered for the animation. A larger number of frames can result in more fluid motion and allow an animation to play for longer while maintaining the same fluidity. However, increasing the number of frames will significantly increase render time and the amount of memory or hard disk space needed to store the rendered animation. |
Render All Frames |
Leave this option checked if you wish to render the entire animation from beginning to end. To render only a segment of the animation, uncheck this box and set the desired beginning and ending frames in the sliders appearing below this option. |
Output Section
This section specifies how the animation generated by the previous section will be stored. The "Render To" option at the top of this section specifies whether rendering should occur to memory or your hard disk. These options are discussed below.
Rendering to Memory
Rendering to memory gives you the chance to see the final animation before you decide if and how it will be saved. However, animations are very memory intensive and you should only proceed with this option as long as the required memory estimate in the middle of this section indicates a reasonable amount of memory that your computer will not have trouble providing.
After rendering to memory is complete, the Export Animation dialog can be used to save the result. Note that there are animation export types that are available only through that dialog.
Rendering to Hard Disk
When rendering to hard disk you will have the opportunity to chose from the following export types:
Export Type |
Description |
A common video format used by many software applications. |
|
A format that can be used to add animation to websites. |
|
The animation is saved as a series of standard images. |
When You're Ready to Render
Once all options have been set as desired, click the "Begin" button at the bottom of the dialog to start rendering your animation.