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Table of Contents

This page provides information about the V-Ray Frame Buffer settings.


Overview


The V-Ray Frame Buffer offers options to configure the Render View, Render Region, History, and Layers options. The settings mainly control visibility, location of stored renders and presets, amount of disk space to use and navigation within the VFB.


UI Path: ||V-Ray Frame Buffer|| > Options menu > VFB settings


Note

The Save and Close buttons are placed at the down-right corner of the VFB Settings window. If you do not click Save, none of your changes will be saved.


Render View


The Render View tab controls zooming, panning, and comparing of rendered images. Note that the Compare and Keyboard Pan options are available only when the Show Advanced Settings checkbox is selected.

Zoom

Zoom Multiplier – Multiplies the zoom for one mouse click.

Outside Margin – The fraction of the displayed region allowed to be outside of the displayed image. Useful when panning the image while zoomed in.

Compare

Compare Fit Mode – Specifies how to fit the compared images when their resolutions are not the same. You can choose between HorizontalVertical and Center.

Split Hit Tolerance – Specifies a number of pixels around the split lines when deciding they are close enough to be dragged with the mouse.

Center zoom on Split Line – When enabled, zooming in/out while in history compare mode is centered around the split position(s).

Keyboard Pan

Use VFB 3.x keyboard pan – When enabled, keyboard pan is in image pixels. When disabled, keyboard pan is in fractions of the displayed image.

Keyboard pan display fraction – Specifies the number of pixels (or fraction of the image) to pan with the keyboard.

Keyboard pan shift multiplier – Specifies a multiplier for the pan amount when the Shift key is pressed.

Bucket outlines – Controls the appearance of buckets in VFB during rendering.

Different color by bucket – Each core from local rendering machine receives its own color for the bucket outlines and machine name. Each DR server will have its own single unique color for the markings.
White – All bucket outlines, names of DR servers, and the local rendering machine are in white.
Black – All bucket outlines, names of DR servers, and the local rendering machine are in black.
None – No bucket outlines and markings are displayed during rendering.

Resize VFB on Resolution Change – When enabled, loading an image from history or starting a new render resizes the VFB to fit.

Dither colors – When enabled, colors are dithered for a smoother transition between them.

Copy to clipboard with alpha – When enabled, alpha is added when copying the current channel to the clipboard.



Render Region Controls


This tab holds settings related to the Render Region in the VFB. Note that only the Show controls on hover only and the Show region sizes options are visible when the Show Advanced Settings checkbox is cleared.

Thickness – Controls the thickness of the render region hover controls.

Opacity – Adjusts the opacity of the region hover controls in a 0-255 range.

Distance – Specifies the distance between the region controls and the render region itself.

Hit Tolerance – Specifies how far (in pixels) away from the region controls the controls can be picked.

Corner Ratio – Determines the size of the corner controls of the render region. The value is calculated as a ratio of the region width to its height.

Middle Ratio – Controls the ratio of the side render region controls.

Move Ratio – Controls the move ratio of the render region controls.

Show controls on hover only – When enabled, controls are visible only when hovering over the render region. When disabled, the controls are always visible.

Move the region with the crosshair – Allows moving the region with the crosshair in its center. When disabled, the region is moved with the additional move controls that appear between the controls for resizing the region.

Fill rectangles – When enabled, the region controls have fill. Otherwise, the controls are only drawn as outlines.

Draw Outlines – When enabled, the region controls have outlines.

Show region sizes – When enabled, the size value of all four sides of the render region rectangle are visible.



History


The History tab controls the render history settings such as location, amount of disk space to use and visibility parameters. Note that the Font size and Background opacity sliders are only available when the Show Advanced Settings checkbox is selected.

Enabled – Enables/disables render history, where the VFB keeps a history of previously rendered images.

Location

Use Project Path – When enabled, creates a new vfb_history folder to use as the History Folder within the current 3ds Max project directory.

History Folder – Specifies the location where render history images are saved as V-Ray Image files (.vrimg).

Max Size on Disk (MBs) – Specifies the maximum amount of disk space to use for the render history images. When the history exceeds the specified amount, the oldest images are deleted.

Auto Save – When enabled, all rendered images are automatically saved to the history.

Auto Load Layers – When enabled, loading an image from history also loads the layer tree saved with the image.

Position and Thumbnail

Left/Bottom – Specifies the position of the Render History panel.

Min Thumbnail Width – Specifies the minimum width of the thumbnails in the Render History panel. You can additionally specify the image ratio for the thumbnails.

Center/Fit Inside/Fit Outside – Specifies how to fit the thumbnail in the History panel.

Info Font and Background

Font size - resolution and time – Specifies the font size of the resolution and time information on the thumbnail.

Font size - note – Specifies the font size of the notes on the thumbnails.

Font size - shortcut key – Specifies the font size of the 1-9 shortcut keys.

Background opacity - resolution and time – Specifies the opacity of the resolution and time background.

Background opacity - note – Specifies the opacity of the note background.

Background opacity - compare letter – Specifies the opacity of the compare letter background.

Show resolution/time – Specifies whether to show details about resolution and time of the rendered image. You can choose between NeverOn History HoverOn Image Hover, and Always

Show note/name – Specifies whether to show the name/note at the bottom of the thumbnail. You can choose between NeverOn History HoverOn Image Hover, and Always

Show shortcut key – Specifies whether to show shortcut keys on the rendered image thumbnail. You can choose between NeverOn History HoverOn Image Hover, and Always



Filter/Layer presets


The Filter/Layer presets tab specifies a location to store the layer/filter tree presets.

Path – Shows the path where the layer tree and filter presets are saved. By default, it points to the location of the ready-made V-Ray presets, but you can redirect it to a folder with your own presets.

Use own image Layer stacks when comparing in History – When enabled, the Layer panel is disabled and History A/B/C/D Compare uses the respective Layers setup of each image. When comparing the current render to one from the History panel, editing the Layers setup is available and is applied only to the current render. When comparing images from the History panel, the Layers panel is disabled and editing the Layers tree is not possible.

Ignore existing correction for the Filter thumbnails – When enabled, each Filter thumbnail previews the preset applied to the original image ignoring other correction layers present in the layers stack. When disabled, the complete layers stack is taken into account.


Shortcuts


The Shortcuts tab allows you to toggle hotkeys on and off and to specify your own custom hotkeys.

Enable shortcuts – When disabled, turns the hotkeys off in the VFB for the current session. This option is enabled by default, and when re-loading Cinema, it will again be enabled, regardless of the previous setting.

Configuration profile – If you have a premade V-Ray Configuration file .vrhk, you can load it here to transfer your configuration to Cinema 4D.

In the Edit hotkeys section, you can assign additional hotkeys to an option or replace the default ones with custom ones. Select an option from the list. It is then displayed instead of the Select a shortcut to edit placeholder. Type the new hotkey in the New hotkey slot. When happy, click on the Assign button to add the hotkey shortcut. You can preview all the keys assigned to the current option in the Assigned hotkeys window. Select one and click on Remove selected to remove it. 

You can also Remove all hotkeys or Reset all to default, using the corresponding buttons. Remember to click Save and close to apply your changes.



Image Options


The VFB image options are useful when you want to save a render in an image format different than the one set in the Render Settings Common tab.

Always confirm image options when saving – A prompt window confirming the file type image options appears each time an image is saved from the VFB.

JPEG image options

Quality – Sets the image compression level of the JPEG output.

PNG image options

Compression  Specifies the image compression level for the .png file type.

Bits per channel – Specifies the bit depth, i.e. the amount of data per channel for the .png file types. 8 bits and 16 bits are available as options, depending on the file type.

TIF image options

Bits per channel – Allows you to choose between 8-bit, 16-bit (half float) and 32-bit (full float) precision.

Interleaved – When enabled, the color information for each pixel is saved using the Interleaved order which means that the full color for each pixel is saved before moving to the next one. Some image processing applications require that the image be saved in this mode.

TGA image options

Compression – Specifies compression options for the resulting image.

OpenEXR image options

Compression – Allows you to choose the compression type for the output file:

Default – V-Ray chooses the type of compression to apply.
No compression
– Disables all compression. 
Run-length – Basic form of compression that is comparable to the one used by Targa/BMP files.
Scanline Zip – Zip style compression applied to individual scanlines.
Block Zip – Zip style compression applied to blocks of 16 scanlines at time. More effective then Scanline Zip, but can be slower to decompress.
PIZ – Uses a combined Wavelet / Huffman compression. This form of compression is quite effective when dealing with grainy images, and often surpasses any of the other options under grainy conditions.
PXR24 – Converts data to 24 bit, then uses Zip compression. It is lossless for half and 32bit integer data and slightly lossy for 32bit float data.
B44 – This form of compression is lossy for half data and stores 32-bit data uncompressed.
B44A – An extension to B44 where areas of flat color are further compressed. Regular B44 compresses uniformly regardless of image content.
DWAA – JPEG-like lossy compression format. Compresses 32 scanlines together.
DWAB – Same as DWAA, but compresses blocks of 256 scanlines to achieve a better compression ratio.

Bits per channel – Allows you to choose between 16-bit (half float) and 32-bit (full float) precision.


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