# Render settings

This parameter panel lets you set the general parameters for rendering images or movies of the current scene.

## Parameters

Rendering range

  Selects the animation frames to be rendered. Note that if you select Complete animation or Range here, you should also choose an output filename to let OVITO write the rendered frames to disk.

Every Nth frame

  When rendering an animation interval, this parameter controls how many frames from that interval are actually rendered. Set this to 1 to render all frames. Set this to 2 to render only every other frame, etc.

File number base

  When rendering a sequence of image files, OVITO generates filenames that include the current frame number. This parameter lets you choose another base file number.

Output image size

  Specifies the output image's width and height in pixels.

Background color

  The background color of the output image.

Generate alpha channel

  When activating this option, OVITO will make those parts of the output image transparent, which are not covered by an object. This is useful if you intend to position the image in front of some other background later, for instance on a presentation slide. Note that this only works when using file format that supports transparency information (e.g. PNG).

Change renderer

  Use this to select a different rendering engine. OVITO offers two rendering back-ends, which differ in terms of quality and rendering speed. By default the hardware-accelerated OpenGL renderer is active, which is the same rendering engine used for interactive display in the viewports. The Tachyon renderer, in contrast, is a software raytracing engine, which offers better shading algorithms but is slower.

Save to file

  Activate this option to save the generated image or movie to disk. Otherwise the rendered image is only displayed in the frame buffer window. If you press Choose... button to pick a output file name, this option will be checked automatically.

  When rendering an animation sequence, the generated animation frames will be written to single movie file if you select a movie format (e.g. AVI). When an image format is selected, the filename will serve as a base name, and a sequence of image files is generated by appending the current frame number.

To start the rendering process, press the Render Active Viewport button.