Softimage XSI – Rendering an Animation in 7 Easy Steps
Have you made an animation and now you are not quite sure how to render it? What is rendering
anyways? Rendering is the process of applying all of the elements of lighting, texturing, shadows, etc…
to your scene. When you render out a movie, you render one image for every frame in your movie. So if
you have a 5000 frame movie, you render 5000 images. These images are then compiled into a final
movie format using SoftImage’s Flipbook. The purpose of this exercise is to discuss the process of
rendering.
Once you have created an animation and applied all kinds of cool materials, textures, and lighting to your
scene - you are ready to render. The first thing you need to do is to set up the camera view that will be
used to view your final scene/movie. Unless you animate the camera, the camera view will remain
stationary. For the purpose of this exercise, let’s use the default (stationary) camera provided in the scene.
So to setup your render view, select the camera from the drop-down in one of your viewing windows and
position the camera where you can see your entire scene. (You might want to play your animation and
make sure that it is the final view that you want).
Camera View is
selected in viewport
This is the view that
will be used for
rendering and in the
final movie.
Now, you are ready to render but first let’s setup the render options (this is an important step). Go to the
Render Module by using the 3 (or F3) shortcut key on your keyboard and select Render → Options, the
Render dialog box appears. If you look under where it says Render Options there are a ton of different
tabs that allow you to fine-tune the quality of the render but the main ones to be familiar with are the
Output and Format tabs.
1. First under the output tab, you need to define the location and filename for all of your images. The
default location to store your images is the Render Pictures folder under your main project folder. To
change this, you can click on the
(Browse button) next to the Image name box – make sure you name
your final images. Notice that it puts a # sign after your image name. This means that it is going to name
all of your images the designated file name and then number them sequentially. So in my example, I will
have animation1.1, animation1.2, animation1.3 etc… all the way up to my final frame number (600).
A. Payne and S. Winters, Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies
2. This brings me to the next
important step – setting your start and
end frames. You can set your start
and end frames simply by typing them
into the numeric boxes to the right of
“Start” and “End.” In this example, I
have a 600 frame animation so my
Start Frame # is 1 and my End Frame
# is 600.
3. Next, you need to define your
output omage format. The default
format is SoftImage (.pic) – this is a
fine one to use. However, if you
would like to be able to view your
images in another software such as
Photoshop or Windows Explorer –
you may wish you use a format that is
universally recognized (such as JPG).
4. Now, go to the Format tab – this
is where you set your Camera View
and define your final output image
resolution. Where it says Output
Camera, select the camera that you
used to set your final view. If it is
the default camera, it will simply be
called Camera.
5. For movies made for televistion,
leave the Picture Standard and
Picture Ratio options set to the
default (NTSC with 1.333 ratio).
Finally define your final image
resolution – this is the final screen
size of your images and the resultant
movie – 720x486 is the default. If
you want to change this, first check
the Maintain Picture Ratio option this maintains the ratio of the image.
1.
2.
Change the location
to of where to store
your final images
by hitting this
button.
Change the image
format using the
dropdown menu.
3.
7.
4.
6.
5.
6. Now you can increase or decrease the Resolution X or Resolution Y values as you like – notice that when
you change one value, the other changes appropriately.
7. Before you hit render, one other important step that I do is to “Enable the Jitter” under the Aliasing Tab –
this is just a personal suggestion. Now to begin rendering, simply hit the Render button at the top of the box.
It is good to3 not run any other processes on your computer while rendering is taking place. Good luck!
A. Payne and S. Winters, Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies