All Projects → FreeCAD → FreeCAD-render

FreeCAD / FreeCAD-render

Licence: other
The Render workbench

Programming Languages

python
139335 projects - #7 most used programming language
POV-Ray SDL
72 projects

FreeCAD Render Workbench

FreeCAD Addokn manager status Language grade: Python

A FreeCAD workbench to produce high-quality rendered images from your FreeCAD document, using open-source external rendering engines.

ShowCase

Introduction

The Render Workbench is a replacement for the built-in Raytracing Workbench of FreeCAD. It is based on the same philosophy, but aims to improve certain aspects of Raytracing:

  • The Render Workbench is written fully in Python, which should make it much easier to understand and extend by non-C++ programmers.
  • Exporters to rendering engines are implemented as plugins, which should facilitate the addition of new engines. The Render Workbench already supports several more renderers than Raytracing Workbench, like Appleseed, LuxCoreRender and Cycles.
  • The Render Workbench provides enhanced features, compared to Raytracing: scene lighting, camera enhanced control, material support etc.

Supported rendering engines

At the moment, the following rendering engines are supported:

Installation

The Render Workbench is part of the FreeCAD Addons repository, and thus can be installed from menu Tools > Addon Manager in FreeCAD. This is the recommended installation method.
However, alternatively, it can also be installed manually by downloading this repository using the "clone or download" button above. Refer to FreeCAD documentation to learn more.

In addition to workbench installation, you will also need to install and set up one or more external render engines, among the supported ones.

Usage

In quick-start mode, after installation has correctly be done, rendering a FreeCAD model is just a 4-steps process:

  1. Create a rendering project: Press the button in the toolbar corresponding to your renderer and select a template suitable for your renderer
    (you may start with a 'standard' flavour, like appleseed_standard.appleseed, cycles_standard.xml, luxcore_standard.cfg or povray_standard.pov)

  2. Add views of your objects to your rendering project: Select both the objects and the project, and press the 'Add view' button

  3. Set your point of view: Navigate in FreeCAD 3D View to the desired position and switch to Perspective mode.

  4. Render: Select your project and press the 'Render' button in toolbar (also available in project's context menu).


...and you should get a first rendering of your model.

More features

Optionally, you may tweak some particulars of your scene:

These adjustments should take place between steps 2 and 3.

Contributing

Any contributions are welcome! Please read our Contributing guidelines beforehand.

Feedback

For feedback, bugs, feature requests, and further discussion please use a dedicated FreeCAD forum thread, or open an issue in this Github repo.

Code of Conduct

This project is covered by FreeCAD Code of Conduct. Please comply to this code in all your contributions (issue openings, pull requests...).

Note that the project description data, including the texts, logos, images, and/or trademarks, for each open source project belongs to its rightful owner. If you wish to add or remove any projects, please contact us at [email protected].