Files – Knowledge Base

High Definition rendering = a realistic model of your building/space

HD rendering is now a self-service option for customers. Saltmine users can now request an HD rendering to be generated within Saltmine where it will be automatically saved to ‘Files‘ as a .jpg. Customers will receive an email notification upon completion of the render.

Adding this feature as a self-service option will help to reduce lead time for HD render requests and automate the HD rendering process. This process will also track the number of HD renders that are still available to be generated.

Note: There is a contractual limit on renders per customer. Reach out to your Customer Success Manager for more information.

How To Self Render (Screen Recording)

Advanced Options

By selecting the “Show advanced options” check box there are several additional settings, defined below, that can be adjusted to enable generating the perfect HD render.

Recommended Preset/Tone Mapping:

**Axonometric:** Applies to both axonometric and top view renders

**Interior Lighting- Sparsely Distributed Layout:** Applies for interior rendering where general or ambient lightings are placed sparsely (further than 4-6 ft apart), with few to no supporting lightings

**Interior Lighting- Densely Distributed Layout:** Applies for interior rendering where general or ambient lightings are placed 4-6 ft apart (or 2-3 ceiling tiles), in accordance with recommended practice

**Exterior:** Applies for exterior rendering

Exposure: Is the amount of light per unit area reaching a frame of photographic film or the surface of an electronic image sensor, as determined by shutter speed, lens aperture, and scene luminance. Exposure is measured in lux seconds, and can be computed from exposure value and scene luminance in a specified region

Highlights: Can be considered the parameter defining how much “over exposure” is allowed. As it is decreased from 1 towards 0, high intensities will be more and more “compressed” to lower intensities. When burn_highlights is 0, the compression curve is asymptotic so that an infinite input value maps to a white output value, making over-exposure no longer possible. A good default value is 0.5.
Calculated like this: 1 – user input (so 0.75 in the dialog means we will set it to 1-0.75 = 0.25)

Shadows: When the upper part of the dynamic range becomes compressed it naturally loses some of it’s former contrast, and one often desires to regain some “punch” in the image by using the crush_blacks parameter. When 0, the lower intensity range is linear, but when raised towards 1, a strong “toe” region is added to the transfer curve so that low intensities get pushed more towards black, but in a gentle fashion. When the upper part of the dynamic range becomes compressed it naturally loses some of it’s former contrast, and one often desires to regain some “punch” in the image by using the crush_blacks parameter. When 0, the lower intensity range is linear, but when raised towards 1, a strong “toe” region is added to the transfer curve so that low intensities get pushed more towards black, but in a gentle fashion.

Saturation: Compressing bright color components inherently moves them towards a less saturated color. Sometimes, very strong compressions can leave the image in an unappealingly de-saturated state. The saturation parameter allows an artistic control over the final image saturation. 1.0 is the standard “unmodified” saturation, higher increases and lower decreases saturation.

EV (Exposure Value): Is a number that represents a combination of a camera’s shutter speed and f-number, such that all combinations that yield the same exposure have the same EV (for any fixed scene luminance). Exposure value is also used to indicate an interval on the photographic exposure scale, with a difference of 1 EV corresponding to a standard power-of-2 exposure step, commonly referred to as a stop. This is an inverse multiplier on the exposure value. With 5 being its maximum exposure, this can help brighten up things. SMALLER NUMBERS MAKE THE EXPOSURE BRIGHTER.

Vignetting: In a real camera, the angle with which the light hits the film impacts the exposure, causing the image to go darker around the edges. The vignetting parameter simulates this. At 0.0 it is disabled, higher values cause stronger darkening around the edges. Note that this effect is based on the cosine of the angle with which the light ray would hit the film plane, and is hence affected by the field-of-view of the camera, and will not work at all for orthographic renderings. A good default is 3.0, which is similar to what a compact camera would generate.

Gamma: The gamma parameter applies a display gamma correction. If the image will be displayed as-is, without further post-processing by the application, this value should be set to match the displays characteristic, otherwise disabled by setting to 1.

Whitepoint: Is a color that will be mapped to “white” on output. An incoming color of this hue/saturation will be mapped to grayscale, but its intensity will remain unchanged.