Rendering Videos
Ornatrix App can render the frames of the timeline into a video or an image sequence, through the viewport and with any of its renderers. Use it to show an animated groom, a Moov simulation, or a turntable, without exporting the groom to another application first.
Rendering a video
Choose Render > Render Video. The App moves through the frames of the timeline one at a time, renders each of them in the viewport, and writes the result to the file set in the Render Settings. While the frames render, the rest of the application is blocked: a progress bar is shown over the viewport, which keeps showing each frame as it renders. Press Cancel, or Esc, to stop the render at any time.
Each frame is rendered from the viewport's current camera, at the size of the viewport. Simulations are stepped through every frame in order, exactly as during playback, so a simulated groom renders the same motion you see when you play the timeline.
Once the render is done, the display mode, render mode, grid and current time are put back as they were, and a notification offers to play the video or to open the folder of the frames.
Render Settings
Click the gear button to the right of Render Video in the Render menu to open the Render Settings. The window can stay open while you work, and its settings are remembered between sessions.
- Renderer - what renders the frames. Active (the default) uses the viewport's current display mode. Realistic renders with Cycles, Raytraced with ProRender, and Shaded and Flat with the fast viewport rasterizer.
- Samples - how far each raytraced frame settles before it is captured: the number of samples it accumulates. More samples give a cleaner image and take longer. Shaded and Flat frames ignore it.
- Render Mode - switches the groom into render mode for the render, so operators produce their render-quality output, such as the full hair count. See the Render Mode toggle in the Render menu.
- Hide Grid - leaves the viewport grid out of the frames.
- Frames - render the whole timeline range, or a range of frames of your own.
- Format - MP4 Video (H.264), MOV Video (ProRes 422 HQ), or PNG Image Sequence.
- File - where the result is written. For an image sequence the frames are numbered beside it: shot.png gives shot.0001.png, shot.0002.png and so on. When left empty, the result goes into a Renders folder beside the groom file.
- Quality - for MP4 videos, the H.264 constant rate factor: lower is better, 18 is visually lossless and 23 is the encoder's default.
- Keep Frames - for videos, keeps the PNG frames the video is encoded from, in a folder beside the video.
- ffmpeg - the ffmpeg program the videos are encoded with. Leave it empty to use ffmpeg found on the system PATH.
The Render button at the bottom of the window starts a render with these settings.
Encoding videos with ffmpeg
Videos are encoded with ffmpeg, a free program which is not installed with Ornatrix App. Download it from https://ffmpeg.org, then either add its folder to the system PATH or enter the full path to the ffmpeg program in the Render Settings. Without ffmpeg, Ornatrix App can still render image sequences, which any video editor can turn into a video.
Rendering from Python
The same render is available from the Python Console and scripts:
import ephere_ornatrix_app as app
app.render_video("C:/Renders/shot.mp4", renderer="raytraced", start_frame=0, end_frame=90, samples=32)
print(app.get_render_status())
The call starts the render and returns at once. Poll app.get_render_status() until its state is Finished, Cancelled or Failed, or stop the render with app.cancel_render(). Arguments left out take their values from the Render Settings. AI tools connected to the App can render videos the same way; see Using Ornatrix with Claude.
Related
- The Timeline and Playback - the frame range and frame rate the render follows.
- Rendering with Cycles and Rendering with ProRender - the two raytracers a video can be rendered with.
- Moov Physics Operator - simulations to render.