Quality presets¶

Rendering > Render Quality picks the samples-per-pixel (spp) preset used by the production path tracer. Higher spp = less noise = longer renders. The four presets cover the practical range.

The four presets¶

Preset	spp	Best for	Time per 1024×1024 (M2, RTX 4070)
Draft	4	Live preview while tweaking	~0.4 s / 0.3 s
Preview	12	Tutorial-grade stills	~1.2 s / 0.9 s
Production	64	Marketing screenshots	~6.0 s / 4.5 s
Final	256	Hero shots, print, the logo gif	~24 s / 18 s

Times scale linearly with resolution (4x area → 4x time).

Custom spp¶

For a one-off render at a non-preset value:

Rendering > Render Quality > Custom… opens a small dialog with a spp slider (1 - 1024). Useful when you want 128 spp because 64 shows residual noise but 256 is overkill.

Adaptive sampling¶

By default the tracer uses adaptive sampling: each pixel samples until its variance falls below a threshold, then stops. Plain regions converge fast, hot spots (specular highlights, caustics) get more samples.

Configure in Preferences > Rendering > Adaptive Sampling:

Variance threshold: default 0.005. Lower = stricter = more samples on hot spots.
Min spp: default 4. Every pixel runs at least this many.
Max spp: cap; 256 by default for Preview, 1024 for Final.

For deterministic spp (every pixel exactly N samples), disable adaptive sampling.

Render Selected vs Render All¶

Action	Effect
`Rendering > Render Selected`	Path-trace just the selected placement, render into the canvas
`Rendering > Render All`	Path-trace the whole scene
`Rendering > Render Region`	Drag-box a region to render

Render Selected is the fastest way to audition lighting on a single hero subject without re-rendering the rest of the scene.

Batch render¶

Rendering > Batch Render… opens a dialog to render a frame range to disk:

Frame range: start / end / step.
Output: directory + filename pattern.
Format: PNG / EXR / JPG.
Notify on complete: ping you via system notification.

Batch renders in the background. Continue editing while it runs; the View Panel might lag slightly during heavy frames.

GPU vs CPU¶

The tracer prefers GPU (wgpu compute shaders). On a GPU-less machine (or with Preferences > Rendering > Force CPU) it falls back to a multithreaded CPU path; expect ~4-8x slower runtimes.

Recommendations¶

Authoring: Draft.
Reviewing: Preview.
Sharing on the team: Preview or Production.
Shipping: Final.

If you cannot tell the difference between Production and Final on your screen, use Production. Final exists mainly for print and for slow-motion logo gifs where lingering noise is conspicuous.