Table of Contents

Rendering

This section covers techniques for generating high-quality image output.

Draw vs. Ray

The draw command enables you to quickly create an antialiased image of the scene with current representations using OpenGL. However, when using draw, lighting and colors are interpolated, analytical geometries are tessellated as triangles, there is no way of displaying shadows, and you cannot render cross-sections.

The ray command use a raytracer to perform per-pixel lighting and coloring, to render analytical geometries with per-pixel accuracy, to display shadows, and to render cross sections. However, such calculations can take a considerable amount of time.

Although the image quality obtained from draw can be improved by adjusting various settings, it is usually easier to just use ray.

General Topics

Image Size

Camera | Lighting | Background | Ray | Transparency

Special Cases

Large Structures