Rendering Tips

The rendering technique used in Chunky is highly CPU-intensive. To get the best results the renderer should use all available CPU cores at 100%. Closing web browsers and other programs can help some in the rendering performance.

The graininess in the rendered images will decrease the longer you let the image bake. The bake time required to get a smooth image is highly dependent on the lighting conditions in the scene.

Save and load a Chunk View

Rendering takes a long time. You can pause and resume a render using a Chunk View. Try the Save Chunk View and Load Chunk View buttons.

Composing a Shot

It is useful to compose your shot with the canvas size set to something low like 400 by 400 pixels, but adjusted to the same aspect ratio you intend to use when rendering the image. Having a smaller canvas size makes it easier to try different camera angles and focus settings quickly. Once you've found a nice angle and field of view combination you can set the canvas size to the intended final render size and start baking. You can use the "Halve" and "Double" buttons to modify the size without modifing the aspect ratio.

Adjusting Camera Settings

Focal offset is used to manipulate the distance from the camera to the focal plane.The following is a simple manual method for setting a correct focal offset:

1. Start by setting DoF to a low value. I chose 3 in this image:
   
2. Now adjust FoV to zoom in on where you want the image to be focused:
   
3. Try to find a focal offset that causes the image to be rendered mostly sharply, then fine-tune the offset to get it right where you want it:
   
4. Last, zoom out to the original field of view setting. Adjust DoF so that you get the desired depth effect (look for example at objects in the foreground/background and adjust DoF until they are as blurry or sharp as you want them to be):
   

Note: if you don't want to mess arround with this parameters, use the "Autofocus" button.

See also: Camera Settings

General Rendering Tips

• Use the J and K keys to move the camera long distances - it is much quicker than W/S!

• Hold the Shift key to move the camera shorter distances with the WASD keys.

• Disable Sunlight when rendering underground scenes or indoor scenes where there is no visible natural light. This will increase the average number of samples per second rendered.

• Disable emitters to greatly decrease the required render time. This however disables all light emitting blocks such as torches, lava etc.

• Disable gamma correction during long renders to speed up the rendering process. When the image starts to get finished gamma correction can be re-enabled again without losing progress.

• Increase the Ray Depth if you have a scene with many transparent or shiny blocks.

CPU Usage

Rendering is highly CPU intesive. In order to maximize the render performance you should use a number of rendering threads equal to the number of cores in your processor. If you want the rendering to take less CPU time so that you can use the computer for other stuff at the same time try using a lower number of render threads.

Alternatively, if you want to work on other things while rendering, you can use as many threads as you have CPU cores/threads, and lower the process priority. Windows users should launch their JAR with "start /belownormal java.exe" instead of "java.exe". Unix users should check out the nice(1) utility. This lets other activities on the computer take priority, so everything else runs at full speed, but any leftover processing power is used to render.

The number of render threads used must be adjusted before you open the 3D view by editing the value in the Render tab.

See Also

• Path Tracing