Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Borders option, thereby giving you an
image whose dimensions are exactly the
size of your limited region.
Note
One of my favorite post-process filters is
Glow Effect, which we get into in Chapter
17. The way its settings work tell it how
many pixels out from a “glowing” surface to
spread the glow's effect.
With Resolution Multiplier, I can do a test
render with a multiplier of 25% to save time.
If the “base” resolution of my render was
640x480, it would then be reduced to
160x120, meaning that LightWave would
only have to figure out the colors of 19,200
pixels, not 307,200 pixels. Because Resolu-
tion Multiplier is used (instead of manually
setting the image size), the pixel-based set-
ting in Glow Effect is
also
scaled.
Once I get the look I want in my test
render, I can return the multiplier to 100%,
knowing the effect I saw in the tiny, quick
test will be the same in the full-size render.
Note
Limited Region is useful when you've got an
intense scene that takes minutes to render
and you are working on tweaking one small
area of that scene. You could also use
Limited Region if you wanted to render a
“wide-screen” format and a “TV” (1:1.333)
version without destroying your composition
by “panning and scanning.” (You'd be doing
the same thing that some directors do when
they choose to shoot on super 35mm when
they know their work will be seen on both
the silver and small screens.)
•
Segment Memory Limit
opens a
panel where you can specify the amount of
memory that LightWave sets aside for the
rendering of each piece of the finished
frame. The default of 8 MB is large enough
to render a 640x480 frame in a single
segment.
Small Segment Memory Limit settings
are helpful when you have a limited amount
of physical memory on your computer or on
a render node. It is almost always faster to
render an image in a single segment than it
is to have a frame split up into several seg-
ments. What you want to do is find a setting
for your computer that is as large as you
need it to be to render your average work
in a single segment without causing your
machine to “dig too deeply” into virtual
memory resources. (Disk access will
always be slower than RAM.)
•
Limited Region
is a pop-up menu that
allows you to specify a smaller portion of
the frame to render. It can only be adjusted
while looking through the Camera view.
Limited Region Borders will render full-
sized frames; however, everything outside
the limited region area will be masked off in
black. Limited Region No Border will crop
the area normally masked out by the
Note
Some plug-ins require you to render your
scenes in a single segment. So, if you're get-
ting weird results in your renders when
things looked just fine in your tiny test ren-
der, try upping the Segment Memory Limit.
Figure 4-2: Pressing <
l
> while looking through a
Camera viewport both activates Limited Region
and allows you to adjust it by clicking on the dotted
yellow line that appears and dragging it to resize.
