Preview Render

[Ian Dallimore]

In the same way that you can drag a marquee box around an area on screen in Cinema 4D, it would be really useful to have a render preview in Vectorworks also. Meaning you don't have to render a full viewport to check the render is set up right, or to check the desired effect of a change in texture or lighting, the texture preview in the texture edit dialogue is useful but is too slow and renders whether you want it to or not, which slows everything down! It would be better to have a click or draw to preview option.

[markdd]

You should investigate the Render Bitmap Tool from the Visualisation Toolset. This will do pretty much what you are asking for. Double-click the tool to see the options available.

[Andrew Davies]

http://app-help.vectorworks.net/2018/eng/VW2018_Guide/Rendering/Rendering_a_Selected_Area.htm

[Matt Overton]

Given most viewports are set to render far more pixels than currently on screen couldn't there be a low dpi pass to get close to visible then continue on infilling the rest of the pixels.

[Matt Panzer]

Perhaps the Render Bitmap tool can be improved to work on sheet layers? Drag the marquee on top of a viewport and it would create a render bitmap of that area at the same DPI as the sheet layer. Maybe it could have an option to set its own DPI as well.

[markdd]

6 minutes ago, Matt Panzer said:

Perhaps the Render Bitmap tool can be improved to work on sheet layers? Drag the marquee on top of a viewport and it would create a render bitmap of that area at the same DPI as the sheet layer. Maybe it could have an option to set its own DPI as well.

That's a great idea.

[Andy Broomell]

On Sheet Layers, one thing I currently do is duplicate the viewport in place, then use the Clip tool in Inclusion mode to draw a marquee around the small part of the rendering I want to see, then hit update. Saves a lot of time compared to updating the whole thing.

 

This can be used to work on one specific object/texture... or, if you've rendered an entire viewport in high quality then realized there's a small error somewhere, this method can be used to put a  "band-aid" over that area and re-render only where needed.

[Stephan Moenninghoff]

On 10/17/2018 at 4:29 PM, Andy Broomell said:

On Sheet Layers, one thing I currently do is duplicate the viewport in place, then use the Clip tool in Inclusion mode to draw a marquee around the small part of the rendering I want to see, then hit update.

That's how I do it.