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Rendering

Raytracing (Render Studio)

The photorealistic route. Materials and environments are set in the Render & Animation panel, and the actual image is produced by Render Studio, driven by Cycles — the physically based raytracer that ships with Rhino.

Because light is really traced through the scene, the things that make jewellery hard to photograph are the things this engine gets right: the reflection of an environment across a polished band, the way a stone breaks light, the contact shadow that tells the eye a piece is sitting on a surface.

How the pipeline fits together

  1. Assign materials. The Render & Animation panel holds metals, gems, grounds, miscellaneous materials and environments, in five tabs. Drag a material onto an object, or select the object and click the material.
  2. Or assign them in bulk. Apply Design & Render Materials pushes an entire set of materials onto a design in one step, which is what you want when the piece has thirty components.
  3. Frame the shot. Safe Frame shows exactly what will end up inside the image, so nothing is cropped off in the render that looked fine in the viewport.
  4. Render. Open Render Studio from the button at the top right of the Render & Animation panel, choose what you are producing, and run it.

What Render Studio can produce

The Type setting decides the job:

  • Image — a single still. See How to create a rendered image.
  • Turntable — the piece rotating on itself, as a video. See How to create a turntable video.
  • Snapshot — renders from saved snapshots, so a set of views comes out consistent.
  • Curves — a line render, for technical and presentation drawings rather than photorealism.

Resolution

A long list of presets covering the formats you actually publish in: 4:3, 1:1 and 16:9 up to 4K (3840×2160), plus ready-made sizes for Instagram posts, stories, reels and video, and for TikTok. Custom unlocks the width and height fields in pixels.

The presets exist so nobody has to look up what aspect ratio Instagram wants this year.

Quality

A passes slider, from 1 to 1000. Each pass refines the image and removes noise; more passes means a cleaner render and a longer wait. Low values are for checking a composition, high values for the final file.

Mode

  • Cycles — the raytracer. This is the photorealistic option.
  • Current Display Mode — renders using whatever display mode the viewport is in, which is near-instant and useful for technical or stylised output.

Video

For turntables: 5 or 10 seconds at 12 or 24 fps as presets, or Custom to set seconds and frames per second yourself.

Rendering a batch

Batch Rendering runs a whole queue of files unattended. It is the answer to a collection of forty pieces that all need the same three shots — you set it up and let the machine work while you do not.

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