Render
Render the 3D scene to colour, depth, normal, and position passes.
What it does
Render captures part or all of the 3D scene onto a flat plane and outputs it as an image, along with matching depth, normals and position passes. Anything wired into Include is lifted out of the live scene and shown only on this node's plane. With Include disconnected it captures everything currently in the scene.
Render quality for that capture is set here: ambient occlusion, bloom, depth of field, outline, motion blur, anti-aliasing, stereo, and ray-traced shadows, reflections and GI, plus an optional path-traced mode for noise-free stills.
When to use it
Bringing 3D geometry into a 2D composite as a rendered image.
Per-shot render quality (AO, bloom, depth of field, outline, ray tracing) instead of the viewport defaults.
A frozen, non-animating capture of the scene at a specific frame: Reproject set to Baked.
A noise-free still for export: Render Mode set to Final Render (Path Traced).
Extracting the depth, normals or position pass alone for a downstream effect.
| Parameter | Type | Default |
|---|---|---|
include | Any | Collection(AttributedCollection { col... |
camera | OneOf([Camera3D]) | — |
bake_width | Number | 1024 |
bake_height | Number | 1024 |
reproject | String | "Live" |
bake_frame | Number | 0 |
pass_type | String | "Color" |
normal_space | String | "World" |
position_range | Number | 10 |
position_offset_x | Number | 0 |
position_offset_y | Number | 0 |
position_offset_z | Number | 0 |
dof_enabled | Boolean | false |
dof_focus_distance | Number | 5 |
dof_focus_range | Number | 3 |
dof_max_blur | Number | 10 |
motion_blur_intensity | Number | 1 |
motion_blur_max | Number | 20 |
post_process_order | String | "Bloom,DoF,Outline,MotionBlu..." |
stereo_enabled | Boolean | false |
stereo_ipd | Number | 0.063 |
stereo_convergence | Number | 5 |
curve_width_scale | Number | 1 |
taa_enabled | Boolean | false |
drive_viewport | Boolean | true |
position | Vec3 | (0, 0, 0) |
rotation | Vec3 | (0, 0, 0) |
scale | Vec3 | (1, 1, 1) |
anchor | Vec3 | (0, 0, 0) |
opacity | Number | 1 |
Gotchas
A Field or Image wired into Include switches Render to a simple bake: it fills Bake Width/Height at that resolution and skips the 3D pipeline. AO, bloom, depth of field, ray tracing and Pass Type all disappear, because there is no camera, lighting or G-buffer to generate them from. Depth, Normals and Position then repeat the same baked image.
One Render node at a time should have Drive Viewport on. That node's quality settings (AO, bloom, ray tracing, and so on) drive the live 3D viewport.
Wiring geometry into Include removes it from the live scene, and it then shows up only on this Render node's plane. A Render node whose output looks empty usually shares objects with something upstream that claimed them first.
Reproject defaults to Live, which re-renders every frame and follows camera orbit. Baked freezes for the session: orbiting, scrubbing and any animation on the source stop affecting it. Bump Bake Frame to re-bake from the current scene state.
Worked example
Add a Render node. Leave Include disconnected to capture the whole scene, or wire in specific geometry to isolate that alone.
Optionally wire a Camera into Camera to render from a specific view instead of the live viewport camera.
Turn on Ambient Occlusion and Ray Tracing for grounded contact shadows and reflections.
Set Reproject to Baked once the shot is right, so it stops changing as you work on the rest of the scene.
For a final still, switch Render Mode to Final Render (Path Traced) and raise the sample budget until the noise clears.
See also
Viewport Camera · Light · Material · Object Render Properties