Render Settings
The Render Settings panel controls quality across three independent scopes: While Editing, Cached Playback, and Final. Each scope stores its own values so that adjusting interactive speed never accidentally changes what you deliver.
Panel access: View › Render Settings, or Render › Render Settings to open the same panel on its Final scope. If the panel list appears greyed out, choose View › Unlock Advanced UI first. View › New Panel › Render Settings opens another panel; edits in either panel update the same document settings.
The Three Scopes
At the top of the panel, three tabs select the active scope. A dot appears on a closed section header when any value in that section differs from the scope's baseline.
| Tab icon | Scope | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| While Editing | While Editing | Controls the live interactive viewport. Changes apply immediately. |
| Cached Playback | Cached Playback | Controls frames rendered into the playback cache. |
| Final | Final Render | Controls quality when rendering frames to disk — what the delivered frames use. |
Profile and Preset
The header shows two unlabeled combination boxes and four buttons. The left combo selects the active profile (a named machine preference that anchors the scope's default values). The right combo selects the active preset within that profile. When the Cached Playback scope is selected, the preset combo shows "—" (Cached Playback has no presets).
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
| New profile from these settings | Create a new profile from the current scope values. |
| Delete this profile | Remove the selected profile (icon-only). |
| Apply this preset to the scope on screen | Load the selected preset and anchor the scope's baseline to it. |
| Save these values into the preset | Write the current scope values back into the selected preset. |
Reset and Copy
Click Reset to restore all values in the current scope to its baseline. The baseline line describes whether it returns to the active preset or to the shipped defaults.
The Copy this scope's values onto another Copy scope button opens a menu listing the other two scopes. Selecting a scope copies the current scope's compatible values onto it.
The Cached Playback scope's sample count and resolution are relationship settings ("match While Editing"), not fixed numbers, so they are not overwritten when copying scope values.
While Editing Scope
Sampling
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Converge samples | Total samples accumulated before the viewport stops. Higher = cleaner. |
| Noise threshold | Stop refining a pixel once noise falls below this level. Lower = cleaner. |
| Min samples | Do not stop before reaching this many samples, even if the threshold is met. |
| Guaranteed bounces | Minimum light bounces always traced before early termination. |
| Light samples / hit | Direct light samples taken at each surface point. More = sharper shadows. |
| Blue-noise sampler | Uses structured noise for more uniform sampling; reduces banding in smooth gradients. |
Denoise
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Denoise | Turn the denoiser on or off. |
| Denoiser | Which denoiser to use: None, OptiX, or OpenImageDenoise. |
| Use GPU | Run the denoiser on the GPU to free CPU resources. |
| Prefilter | Pre-denoise blur quality: None, Fast, or Accurate. |
| Quality | Denoiser quality level: Fast, Balanced, or High. |
| Start at sample | Wait until this many samples before the denoiser activates. Set to 1 to denoise from the first sample. |
Fireflies & clamps
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Clamp indirect | Maximum brightness for indirect light samples. Reduces fireflies. |
| Clamp direct | Maximum brightness for direct light samples. |
| Filter glossy | Smoothing applied to specular highlights, 0–10; 0 = off. |
| Firefly filter | Adaptive filter that detects and removes isolated bright outlier pixels. |
| Firefly ratio | Sensitivity of the firefly filter; higher ratios catch more outliers. |
Caustics
Caustics are focused light patterns from glass, water and polished metal surfaces. VIZid traces them using a photon pass.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Caustics | Mode: Off, Shadow, Fast, or High Quality. To access the Guided mode, turn on Show experimental Guided caustics solver in Settings › System. |
| Photon count | How many photons are traced per pass. More = sharper caustics, slower. |
| Caster aiming | Fraction of photons aimed directly at glass casters, 0–0.95. Only affects the Guided solver. |
| Caustic clamp | Maximum brightness for caustic samples; reduces very bright hot spots. |
| Denoise caustics | Apply a denoiser specifically to the caustics layer. |
| Photon depth | Maximum bounces a photon takes before being discarded. |
| Gather count | How many photon samples are collected at each shading point. |
| Gather radius | Search radius for collecting photon samples. Auto scales to the scene. |
| Caster roughness | Surfaces smoother than this threshold participate as caustic casters. |
| From environment | Emit photons from the environment map to enable sky and HDRI caustics. |
Caustics Lab — an advanced section with individual on/off switches for each caustics component. Switching a component off removes it from the render; this is a comparison and diagnostic tool.
While you move
When the camera or a scene element is moving, VIZid switches to a faster mode and returns to full quality when you stop.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Nav mode | Rendering strategy while moving: Reduced (fast) or Full resolution. |
| Nav resolution | Long-edge pixel width used when Nav mode is Reduced (fast). |
| Nav samples | Maximum samples per frame while moving. |
| Settle | Milliseconds to wait after the last input before returning to full quality. |
| Nav time limit | Hard ceiling (ms) per movement-phase frame; 0 = off. |
| First-frame samples | Samples on the first frame of a camera move. |
The following are switches — each is applied on every moving frame, from the first, independent of the frame-time budget. Full quality returns the moment you stop.
| Switch | What it gives up |
|---|---|
| Fast denoise | Runs the cheaper denoiser while moving — slightly blotchier grain, edges unchanged. |
| No outline / ink | Skips material contours and brush ink during camera, object and material motion. |
| Glass as glass | Renders Glass Solid, Dielectric, Gem, Liquid and Frosted Glass as the fast Glass type. |
| Wood as raster look | Renders Wood materials at their raster look — growth rings and finish only, no pore or knot detail. |
| Hold light samples | Reuses the previous frame's light sampling. Not applied while dragging a light. |
| Shadows off | Removes all shadows while moving. Not applied while dragging a light or environment. |
| Simplify lighting | Caps light bounces on every moving frame. |
| Caustics off | Turns caustics off on every moving frame. |
The two rows below are older camera-drag-only versions — they apply while orbiting but not while dragging an object, a light or a material slider.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Simplify on drags | Reduce light bounces during camera drags. |
| Simplified bounces | Bounce count when Simplify on drags is on. |
| Drop caustics too | Also drop caustics during camera drags. |
Frame-time budget
An optional mode that automatically adjusts quality to keep each frame inside a target render time.
- Turn on Frame-time budget.
- Set Target frame time (in milliseconds).
- Choose which simplifications the budget can apply. Each can also be set to apply always while moving, independently of the budget.
Available simplifications: fast denoiser, Glass material simplification, Wood material simplification, disable outline and ink effects, Hold light samples, Shadow size floor, skip small shadows, turn shadows off, reproject previous frame, Simplify lighting, drop caustics.
Fast GI
An ambient-occlusion pass that approximates indirect lighting for faster interactive rendering.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Fast GI | Enable ambient occlusion. |
| AO after bounce | Apply AO at this bounce depth. |
| AO factor | Strength of the AO darkening. |
| AO distance | How far to search for nearby surfaces. |
Motion blur
Motion blur shutter settings for the interactive viewport. The animation panel's blur toggle governs whether motion blur is enabled at all; these fields set the parameters.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Shutter | Shutter interval in frames. 0 = no blur; 0.5 = half-frame. |
| Steps | Number of time samples within the shutter interval. |
| Auto-raise ceiling | Allow the renderer to automatically increase step count for fast-moving elements. |
Film & output
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Exposure | Exposure compensation (EV). This value is shared with the Final scope — editing one updates both. |
Cached Playback Scope
The Cached Playback scope governs frames rendered into the RAM or disk cache during animation playback.
Fill quality
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Samples | Samples per cached frame. Match reuses the While Editing scope's converge target. |
| Resolution | Match follows the While Editing scope's resolution setting; Full renders at document resolution; Fast renders at a reduced long-edge pixel width. |
| Fast long edge | Long-edge pixel width when Resolution is Fast. |
Cache store
The three controls below are machine preferences — stored per machine, not saved in the document.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Cache store | RAM (faster, limited by available memory) or Disk (allows longer sequences). |
| Cache folder | Where to write cache files when store is Disk. Shown only when store is Disk. |
| Disk budget | Maximum cache size in GB when store is Disk. Shown only when store is Disk. |
Cached motion blur
Motion blur for cached frames is on when the animation panel's blur toggle is on. Set the shutter to 0 to cache sharp frames while the toggle is on. These values seed from the interactive blur settings on read; editing one stops it following.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Shutter | Motion-blur shutter interval for cached frames. |
| Steps | Motion-blur steps for cached frames. |
| Auto-raise ceiling | Allow the renderer to automatically increase step count for cached frames. |
Cached effects
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| No outline / ink | Render cached frames without material contours or brush ink. |
Cached caustics
Cached caustics do not follow the While Editing scope's settings — each cached frame pays a full photon build, so cached playback starts with caustics off.
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Caustics | Caustics mode for cached frames: Off, Shadow, Fast, or High Quality. |
| Photons | Photon count per cached frame (10 000 – 32 M). Only used when Caustics is High Quality. |
To apply changes in the Cached Playback scope, click Rebuild cache at the bottom of the panel to drop the existing cached frames and refill them with the new settings.
Final Scope
The Final scope controls quality when rendering frames to disk. When you add a job to the Render Queue, the current Final scope values are captured with it. Changing them after that does not affect jobs already in the queue.
Sampling
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Noise threshold | Stop refining a pixel when its noise falls below this level. Lower = higher quality. |
| Min samples | Minimum samples per pixel before noise-based stopping takes effect. |
| Time limit | Maximum seconds to spend on each frame. Set to 0 for no time limit. |
| Guaranteed bounces | Minimum light bounces always traced. |
| Light samples / hit | Direct light samples per surface point. |
| Blue-noise sampler | Structured noise for more uniform sampling. |
Noise threshold and Time limit are OR conditions: whichever is satisfied first ends the render. Setting Time limit to 0 lets Noise threshold alone determine when each frame is complete.
Denoise
Same denoiser controls as the While Editing scope (Denoiser: None, OptiX, or OpenImageDenoise; Prefilter: None, Fast, or Accurate; Quality: Fast, Balanced, or High; Start at sample; Use GPU), applied to final output.
The Final denoiser on/off switch and the sample count are in the Render Output panel, not here.
Caustics (Final)
Same caustics controls as While Editing, applied to the final render.
Motion blur
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Motion blur | Enable motion blur in final output. |
| Shutter | Shutter interval in frames. |
| Steps | Time samples within the shutter interval. |
| Auto-raise ceiling | Allow the renderer to automatically increase step count. |
Fireflies & clamps
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Clamp indirect | Maximum brightness for indirect light samples. Reduces fireflies. |
| Clamp direct | Maximum brightness for direct light samples. |
| Filter glossy | Smoothing applied to specular highlights, 0–10; 0 = off. |
Film & output
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Watermark | Text burned into PNG and JPEG output files. |
| Stamp dimensions | Burn the model's overall bounding-box dimensions onto the output image. |
Values Shared by While Editing and Final
These five controls appear in both scopes and share a single value. Editing in one scope updates both:
- Max light bounces — maximum path length before a ray is terminated
- Transparent bounces — additional bounces allowed through transparent surfaces
- Light tree — hierarchical light sampler for scenes with many lights
- Light threshold — skip lights below this intensity (only active while the light tree is off)
- Exposure — EV compensation
Related
- Render a still image — task walkthrough for rendering a hero image
- Render Output — set output path, format and resolution
- Render Passes — add compositing passes to EXR output
- Render Queue — monitor and retry render jobs
- Animation — Cached Playback scope governs animation preview quality