Why would Daz Studio suddenly, spontaneously change my render size? oO
nomad-ads_8ecd56922e
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I've run into a wierd, out of the blue snag. I have a long sequence of scenes that I have been rendering for months as part of a comicbook narrative. Today, for no apparent reason, the picture size of the completed render switched from 1002x861 to 1002x871 between renders, and visually it looks like it sliced ever so slightly off the sides of the shot I've lined up by a few pixels, while making the image visually slightly taller at the top. Basically, the part of the wall I'm seeing at the left and right edges changed slightly, as if I'd zoomed in or our by a hair. For my project to work, I need the whole set of pictures to be 100% consistent in their size from beginning to end, otherwise I'll wind up tediously cropping a bunch of images at the top to bring them back to 1002x861, whihc is an extra hassle I don't want to deal with.
Typically, each shot in the narrative is saved out as an independent scene file, so I went back to a previously rendered scene file and started a render, just to see if it would go back to the expected 1002x861 that that scene had rendered to before, but it also spontaneously went to 1002x871. I'm reasonably sure I haven't changed any settings wrt the camera, and in fact I went into edit mode on the camera used in the scene to see if any of the position or angle settings had changed for that camera in the different saved scenes, and they hadn't. The xtrans, ytrans, ztrans numbers are all exactly the same, and the xrot, yrot, and zrot are all unchanged, same with the focal length. I never have been able to get a handle on what exactly DOES influence the exact render-image height and width, tho. Does changing the size of the viewport in the Render tab pane somehow effect this? I don't think I've adjusted that anytime recently, either. Not in the past couple of days, anyway. And I'm pretty sure I haven't twiddled with any of the settings under the hood wrt graphics settings in Daz Studio.
What is going on here? What do I look at to get it to go back to rendering it at 1002x861 again? Oo
EDIT: I just noticed the same issue with another set of unrelated renders I did recently, here too it spontaneously changed from 1002x861 to 1002x871 on subsequent test renders of that particular test scene. The only changes I made in that case was in changing various shaders here and there on a character in the scene, saving and reloading the scene as I went along. Notice how it kept the apparent hight of the image the same, but for some reason has now sliced off part of the sides in the image (you see part of the view of the walls getting cropped now), even though what really changed was how many pixels TALL the render now is. Apparently something under the hood is shifting the visible WIDTH of the camera view around is if to trying to make sure it doesn't change one iota what part of the floor and ceiling it keeps in view! What... the...?!?? Oo
Could invoking a Ctrl-A when accidently on the wrong pane have joggled something in how Daz Studio processes the camera render settings? I was trying to deal with an issue over here that involved getting ALL the same-named surfaces in a character converted over from 3Dlight shaders to iRay shaders, where the maker of the original shaders had done some nonstandard thing that borked the auto-convert. I mostly have THAT problem solved, but somewhere on all my banging on the Daz Studio interface and cussing at the machine, something quietly changed wrt the render size without me noticing. Oo
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Render settings are saved with the scene, so check that the scene iss till loading correctly.
Here is what my methodology is. Typically, I have a scene lined up, with a set and a character or characters in it, and one or more cameras placed. I get everything the way I like it, I save the scene out in with an umbrella name for the whole project, followed by a frame number for where this scene will fall in the comicbook, a breif description of what's in the specific shot (i.e. Guy picks up ball), and then the date I made this scene. So, it might wind up named something like Chasing the Wild Blue Goose -- 05 -- Guy picks up ball -- 20180218, typically I'll name the render something like WIld Blue Goose 05 -- guy picks up ball (draft 4) -- 20180218, and then after I'm satisfied with that rendered scene, I make changes to the scene itself to be what's in the next panel of the comic, say, moving the guy 3 or 4 feet farther down the hall, and switchinbg the walk pose to the mirror version of the one in the previous panel. And then I save this scene under a fresh name, leaving the previous scene (representing that panel in the comicbook) intact. I have progressed through more than 100 panels that way over the past several months. Actually, coming up on 200. (This comicbook story has expanded much longer than I originally intended. :D It was originally meant to be a brief, silly diversion and it ballooned out of control! :D :D It has, however, been fun and challenging, and a learning experience.) Anyway, one of the reasons I've kept each panel's scene saved as a seperate and distinct file is because occasionally I've looked back at parts of the rendered story and realised I missed something. A wall sconce got accidently left out of one shot, say, or a puddle on the floor didn't show up adequately, so I went back to unhide the wall sconce, and made the little puddle have a slight bit of emmissives glow to it so it no longer disappeared against the floor, then went back and re-rendered all the scenes where that sconce was missing, after unhiding it there, or that puddle was visible, changing the emissive glow in those to match.
This whole section of the story, all the renders came out 1002x861, and it inherited the 1002x861 render size in all subsequent renderes as I progressed from newly-saved scene to newly-saved scene, adding more camera views as I went along (which also all rendered at 1002x861).
For some reason, late this week, all new renders came out 1002x871 instead of 1002x861, even tho I didn't make any changes to the cameras, and haven't added any new camera views into any of the scenes, and instead simply used one from way earlier in the progression.
Anyway, just this afternoon, I went back to a saved out scene from late October of last year. I have not touched this scene file since late October. Having loaded it, I left it on the camera that that scene had been set for originally, and I clicked Render. After the render had progressed a few moments (I wasn't going to let it run the whole hour that scene would probably take), I then hit Cancel, I then navigated down to [...]\Roaming\DAZ 3D\Studio4\temp and checkd the size and shape of the scene-render there. It was 1002x871, NOT 1002x861 like it was supposed to be.
So, yeah, something changed under the hood in Daz Studio this last week, such that it's no longer evaluating the saved camera views exactly the same way as it had been till sometime earlier in the week. It is NOT something that got corrupted in the saved scene file, since this one is from three and a half months ago, and that scene and all the ones around it rendered at 1002x861 last time, but now its rendering as 1002x871. What on Earth would cause DS to spontaneously change the render paramaters without me having changed the saved cameras in any of the scenes?
If you go to Edit>Preferences>Scene tab whata re the settings for saving/loading render settings?
Here is what it looks like with me having simply fired up DS and opened that window.
That looks right, though if you had somehow changed the value in one scene then it would propagate through to the later saves.
In theory, the only time the viewport can alter the render size is if you set "render to Viewport" in the render settings.
Do your render settings still show 1002 x 861 ?
How did you decide on that size by the way? It seems a bit random!
I'm actually not sure where thst size came from, I just always assumed there was some algorythm under the hood that said "This is the frame size I'm gonna use for your renders, based on what video card you're using" or something. That said, when I create a new camera, am I better off ticking Apply Default Settings, Copy Active View, or Apply Active Viewport Transforms? I THINK I've been using the second, or maybe the third. I avoided Apply Default Settings because I figured that would ignore the position and angle I was looking at the scen from, and would place the camera at the coordinates 0, 0, 0 with the angle 0, 0, 0 and I'd have to go manually move that camera over to where I wanted it, instead of it just placing te camera positioned and angled where I was currently looking in Viewport. Have I been interpretting that wrong? oO
Anyway, attached is a screengrab of my current Render Settings pane with Editor tab selected.
Edit to add: Also, is there some (other?) specific place I should be looking wrt finding and adjusting the height and width my images will be rendered?
@nomad-ads_8ecd56922e "Edit to add: Also, is there some (other?) specific place I should be looking wrt finding and adjusting the height and width my images will be rendered?"
It looks like it is locked to use the active viewport size. The dropdown for Dimension preset gives you a lot of common sizes/aspect rations, but you can also pick custom and set your own size.
If I physicaly widen the Viewport a hair, will it cause the rendered image to rejigger back to not-as-tall while keeping the 1002 width?
That's the right place to put a size in. No rejiggering required!
(By using Active Viewport, you have been working with no fixed size.)
It would be better/safer to set the desired size explicitly.
Something that might be adding to the confusion; you've selected "Currently Used" instead of "General" — that only shows parameters that you've changed from default or zero values, so anything you need to change from the default won't show until you click on the proper subcategory button.
Also, the "Active Viewport" setting specifies a size of whatever's left over in the middle between all your active pane groups. If you happen to have a wider or narrower than usual pane active, that will change the Viewport size, and hence your render size. Setting an explicit size overrides this.
Thank you, everyone. Till now I had assumed that selecting Apply Active Viewport (or was it Apply Active Viewport Transforms? I wasn't sure what the functional difference between those was) when making a new camera only cared about the coordinates of the viewport within the set, and the direction it was pointing, since that was the spot THROUGH which I was looking via the Active Portal. After all, that seems pretty much to be what happens when you make a new spotlight and tell it to base it on the active viewport. (Or... IS it...? oO >>dramatic chord<<)
What option should I usually take when making a new camera for scenes from here on out, if I want to keep the rendered pictiure height and width completly consistent and standardized for that whole project, while having it base the camera position on where the viewport is placed and pointed when I make the camera? Apply Defuault Settings? (Tries it.) Hmmmm.... no, that seems to ignore the Viewport position and direction altogether. Gah.
Yes, but the option that is being pointed out here is different - using Active Viewport as the aspect ratio preset in Render Settings.
Those options that appear when creating a new camera have nothing to do with render size.
It's only asking if you want the new camera position to be lined up with your current view or use the same settings as your current camera etc.
I would move a camera into the position I'm happy with and save it as a 'camera preset'.
That way if it's accidentally moved you can load the preset and reset the camera without affecting the rest of the scene.
Okay, so what is the difference between Apply Active Viewport, and Apply Active Viewport Transforms when creating a New Camera?
The latter just applies the transforms - placement and orientation - but not the other settings such as focal length, the former applies all settings.
Yup, pretty much what I thought it probably was. Thank you.