Rendering and images

Terrafold shows your model in several styles while you work, and makes photoreal images with its built-in path tracer. No plug-ins are needed. This page covers the viewport styles, sun and shadows, the Realistic style, renders, and exporting images and animations.

You find most of these commands on the View & Camera and Render ribbon tabs.

Face styles

View ▸ Face Style sets how faces are drawn:

Style	Shows
X-ray	faces see-through, so you can see what lies behind them
Wireframe	edges only
Hidden Line	edges, with faces hiding what lies behind them
Shaded	faces in their colours
Shaded With Textures	faces with their colours and textures
Monochrome	faces in one colour, to judge the shape
Realistic	physically based materials lit by the sun and the sky (see below)

Edge styles

View ▸ Edge Style turns on or off Edges, Back Edges (hidden edges as dashed lines), Profiles (thicker outlines), Depth Cue (thinner edges further away) and Extension (edges drawn a little past their ends).

Styles

The Styles panel (Window ▸ Default Tray ▸ Styles) changes the look of the model and saves it as a style: face settings, Edge colour, Background, Transparency, and the colours used while modelling. You can switch between saved styles, and scenes remember the style they use.

Sun and shadows

View ▸ Shadows turns sun shadows on or off. The Shadows panel (Window ▸ Default Tray ▸ Shadows) sets:

Time and Date, which set the sun's position.
Display: On faces, On ground, From edges, and Use sun for shading.

The sun's position depends on where the model is. Set the location with File ▸ Geo-location ▸ Add Location…: Latitude, Longitude, North angle, Time zone and a Name. Without a location, Terrafold uses a default. File ▸ Geo-location ▸ Clear Location removes it.

Fog

View ▸ Fog turns fog on or off. The Fog panel sets the fog's Start and End distances and its Colour. Tick Use background to fade into the background colour.

The Realistic style

View ▸ Face Style ▸ Realistic shows physically based materials in real time: metals, rough and shiny surfaces, glass, surface detail and glowing materials, lit by the sun with shadows.

The Environment panel (Window ▸ Default Tray ▸ Environment) sets the light around the model:

Sky: Physical (a sky that follows the date, time and location in the Shadows panel), Colour, or HDRI (an .hdr or .exr panorama image you load, with a Rotation). Studio gives a soft studio light.
Intensity and Exposure.
Tone map: ACES filmic, Khronos PBR Neutral or Linear (clamp).
Show as background: show the sky or image behind the model.

The same environment lights renders.

Path-traced preview

View ▸ Path Traced Preview turns the viewport itself into a photoreal render. The image becomes clearer while the camera stands still, and starts again when you move. It uses the graphics card when it can, and a lower-resolution preview on the processor otherwise.

Render a photoreal image

Window ▸ Render… opens the Render window. Press Render to start; the image appears and improves as more samples are calculated. The window shows the sample count, the time so far and an estimate of the time left. Stop cancels the render, and closing the window cancels it too.

Setting	Options
Quality	Draft (16 samples per pixel, denoised), Good (128, denoised), Best (1024)
Size	Viewport (the size of the viewport), 640 × 360, 1280 × 720, 1920 × 1080 or 3840 × 2160
Denoise	smooth the remaining noise when the render finishes
Live	render again when the model or the view changes
Use GPU	render on the graphics card, which is much faster; shown when your graphics card supports it
Depth of field	Off (everything sharp), or an aperture from f/1.4 to f/22
Focus	the distance in focus; Target focuses on the camera target

Save PNG… saves the image.

The renderer handles physically based materials, thin and solid glass, glowing faces, the sun and the physical sky or an HDRI, and depth of field. Garden materials and plants render with their seasonal colours.

Export the view as an image

File ▸ Export ▸ 2D Graphic… saves the current view, in the current style, as a PNG image.

Export an animation

File ▸ Export ▸ Animation… saves the scene animation as a series of PNG images, one per frame, named like walk_0001.png, walk_0002.png and so on. It uses the scenes included in the animation and the transition and delay times from View ▸ Animation ▸ Settings. Use a video editor or another tool to turn the frames into a video.

The command is available once at least one scene is included in the animation. See Scenes.

Render from the command line

terrafold-cli render makes the same photoreal renders without opening the window, which is useful for batches or high resolutions:

terrafold-cli render garden.tfo garden.png --quality good --width 1920 --height 1080

It writes a PNG, or a linear .hdr or .exr image for further editing. Useful options are --scene NAME to render through a scene's camera, --samples N, --denoise, --time SECS to limit the render time, and --f-stop N with --focus for depth of field. Run terrafold-cli render --help for the full list, and see File formats for the other commands.