Render Presets

Render Presets is a plugin for LightWave 3D that I wrote some time ago when I worked with a project that had me switching between a couple of different rendering settings for the same scenes over and over again.

I continued to find it useful and it has evolved over time to include more and more settings, so I decided to clean up the GUI a bit and make it more generic so I could release it in public.

Render Presets lets you manage a library of different common rendering related settings to quickly organize, apply or switch between them.
Originally it only contained the settings I usually switch between, but for this release I tucked in most of LightWave’s common render settings. I might add a few more in the future when time permits.

Usage

Render Presets consists of two plugins, the main plugin is a master class plugin, which manually can be started by adding it from the Master Plugins window in LightWave. Though, for convenience I’ve added a companion plugin which can be added to LightWave’s menus, like in the screenshot to the right, or mapped to a keyboard shortcut. The sole purpose of this companion plugin is to automatically start the Render Presets plugin and open it’s window.

Workflow

Render Presets open in a non-modal window so you can keep it open while you work if you have the need to keep changing settings often.

Each section in the settings is preceded with a “Enable in Preset” checkbox, which lets you to decide what options you want to include when you apply the preset. This allows you to make very specific presets, like a preset that only applies to the Camera, or a preset that only changes the Global Illumination and Render settings and so on.

Main Buttons

The main buttons are pretty self-explanatory, but here’s a quick run through.

• New: Adds a new empty preset to the list.
• Save: Saves the presets to disk. The plugin automatically saves the presets when you remove it or quit LightWave, though you can still use this to save, just in case.
• Rename: Renames the selected preset.
• Delete: Deletes the selected preset.
• Up/Down: Moves the selected preset in the list, to organize the order.
• Duplicate: Duplicates the selected preset to use as a starting point for a new entry.
• About: The logo from this website. Outstanding feature!
• Apply: Applies the selected preset to the scene.

There’s a comment field at the bottom of the settings section, where you can type something clever or useful about the preset.

Additional

Just some additional information that can be good to know about the plugin.

• If the Camera settings is enabled in the preset, and the scene contains more than one camera, a window will popup when you apply the preset that let’s you select which camera to apply the preset to, so you don’t accidentally apply it to the wrong camera.
• If you have the settings in the Render Tab enabled and apply the preset, you might be fooled that Render Lines and Depth Buffer AA wasn’t applied if you have LightWave’s Render Globals » Render Tab open at the same time.
  Don’t panic! They were applied, LightWave just doesn’t refresh its GUI for these two checkboxes for some reason when they are changed from the outside. Switch to another tab and back again in Render Globals and you’ll see that they have been updated.
• Sky Squeeze and Ground Squeeze are only applied if you use LightWave versions above 9.6 (9.6.1 OB or HC).
• The Camera Settings are not designed to work with the Classic Camera.

That’s about it, happy preseting!

Download

Available downloads for the Render Presets plugin.

Latest Release

• Download version 1.3 - 28 Jun 2011

Older Releases

• Download version 1.2 - 1 Jun 2010
• Download version 1.1 - 27 May 2010
• Download version 1.0 - 7 Mar 2010

Source

Render Presets is released as an open source project under the new BSD License.
You can obtain the source code by:

• Browsing the Repository
• Subversion Checkout

If you don’t want to fetch all my scripts, get the latest bleeding edge by changing the path:
http://js-lscripts.googlecode.com/svn/RenderPresets/trunk/

or for a specific version:
http://js-lscripts.googlecode.com/svn/RenderPresets/tags/{VERSION}/

Support

There is no official support for this plugin, but if you run into any problems or bugs, you can file a report in the issue tracker and it will be looked into. You need to have a Google Account to file a new issue.

Report a Render Presets issue

Compability

Render Presets have been tested with LightWave 3D 9.6, 9.6.1 OB, HC – Win32, Win64 and Mac OS.
Render Presets 1.3 have been tested with LightWave 3D 10.0 and 10.1.

Changelog

The development history of Render Presets.

Version 1.3 – 28 Jun 2011

• Fixed Issue 1: Attempt to access undeclared array selectedPreset when running under LightWave 10.0 and 10.1.
• Implemted Issue 2: Duplicate presets button.
• Minor fixes for running the script uncompiled.

Version 1.2 – 1 Jun 2010

• Added a [Grab] button on the Global Illum Panel to copy the current GI settings from the scene.

Version 1.1 – 27 May 2010

• Fixed a bug that could cause a preset to be cleared when closing/opening the window.
• Added a preset option for Camera Resolution Multiplier.

Version 1.0 – 7 Mar 2010

• First public release of the plugin.