Blender For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Do Low-Resolution Test Renders

When you're finalizing the look of a model, you often have to make a quick change to the model and render (F12) it to see what it looks like. If you're not careful, you could spend more time waiting for those little test renders than you do actually working on your model.

When you're just doing test previews, these tips can reduce the render time:

• Turn off anti-aliasing. Aliasing is that jaggy stair-stepping that happens around some edges in your renders. Anti-aliasing is the process of trying to smooth those jaggies out. The way anti-aliasing works in Blender is by using a technique known as oversampling, where it renders the same section multiple times and averages out the results to make those edges smoother. Having anti-aliasing enabled is great for final renders, but can really eat up time when you just want to do a quick test. Disable anti-aliasing by left-clicking its check box in the Render Properties.
• Render at reduced size. Most of the time, when you're doing a test, you don't really have to see what the full-size final image will look like. This generalization is especially true if the final render is for print or film, where the final resolution can be greater than 4,000 pixels wide. Of course, you could manually enter a smaller size in the Dimensions section of the Render Properties, but Blender offers a faster way. If you look in the Render Properties, you see a slider under the X and Y resolution values. Adjust this slider to make ...