How to always render from chosen camera?

[Anonymous]

I'm probably missing something really simple and obvious, but I would like to be able to set the renderer to always render from a specific camera's view regardless of which viewport is currently active when I initiate a render.  Currently, I find myself working on the model in various viewports and then forgetting to set one of them back to the camera view before rendering which results in a render of an undesired view.  I'd like to force the renderer to always use a specific view or camera no matter how the viewports are currently set up.

Can this be done - is there an option to do this somewhere that I can't find?

Apologies if this has already been asked and answered - I didn't find anything in search.

[RGhost77 · Accepted solution]

Render Setup->View to Render->Lock (button)

[Anonymous]

I'm sure I tried that several times as well as the lock on the render window but it only ever worked when the camera view is the active viewport or it's one of the view ports currently displayed. I just tired it again to make sure and it actually worked this time. I dunno what i was doing wrong but it seems ok now - thanks, it was driving me a bit nuts.

[Anonymous]

Same problem here with max 2018, even with locked view to render, it's not working...

Really annoying

[Anonymous]

I've not tried this in 2018, but it solved the issue I was having in 2016.

According to the help docs - "View to Render

Shows the viewport that renders when you click the Render button. To specify a different viewport to render, choose it from the list or activate it in the main user interface.

The drop-down list contains all viewports available in all viewport layouts. Each viewport is listed with the layout name first, followed by a hyphen and then the viewport name. For example: "Row 1, Row 2 - Front." For this reason, to identify viewports easily, give your layouts meaningful names, such as Closeups.

Activating a different viewport in the main interface automatically updates this setting if Lock To Viewport (see following) is off.

Lock to Viewport: When on, locks the view to the one shown in the Viewport list. This enables you to adjust the scene in other viewports (which become active as you use them), and then click Render to render the viewport you originally chose. When off, Render always renders the active viewport.

"

The key here is "... in all viewport layouts." 

What I did, was:-

(1) Create my camera and adjust that viewport as needed and keep it as the active viewport.

(2) Create a new custom layout which included the active camera view I wanted to render, as one of the four viewports (max only allows for 4 viewports to be displayed at most.)

(3) Save this viewport layout as a new viewport layout preset.  (I needed to do this via the Viewports Layout Tab toolbar which I usually have disabled)

(4) Switch back to the normal (default) viewport layout (top/front/left/perspective) or whatever else you normall use that doesn't include the camera viewport.

(5) In Render Setup > View to Render, my custom "camera" layout is now selectable along with the 4 other (default) viewports.  I select the "camera" one (even though it's not currently visible in my current display layout), toggle the LOCK button to ON

(6) Done!

Now whenever I render, the render uses to viewport from the custom layout viewport regardless of the viewport layouts currently displayed or active on the screen.

With the Viewport Layouts toolbar visible, I can quickly switch to and from my camera layout to make adjustments as needed and flip back to my normal viewport view for working/modelling - the render will continue to use my camera layout for rendering as long as it's locked.

I hope this all makes sense, and I'm confident it will behave the same in 2018 as it does in 2016.  It's a little convoluted, (harder to explain than actually do) but until Max supports more than 4 displayable viewports, I think it's the best solution.

Cheers!

[Anonymous]

Hi TheXennon,

Thank you for your (long) explanation but finally I could render my camera view easily

The problem comes from the difference between Viewport and View : 3ds max makes a difference for render, modo doesn't for example

In fact the lock in the render setup on the right of "View to render" will lock the viewport selected not the view ! The viewport is the position of the view in the quad layout viewport

So if I go back to the Quad layout that have four viewport numbered from 1 to 4, the viewport in bottom right will be Quad 4, it's the viewport Quad 4

So let say I use Quad 4 and use camera view it will be Quad 4 - Camera

If I choose this viewport in "View to render" and lock it, it will lock only the viewport but if I change the view in the viewport and use perspective, max will render perspective not camera

The trick is to not change the view of the viewport and use an other viewport for perspective

Or use a different layout as you stated

Thanks again theXennon, using a custom layout could be interesting but I wanted a simple solution 😉

[Anonymous]

The custom layout method allows you to have your 4 viewports be anything
OTHER than what you want to render thus keeping the renderable view
completely separate from what your currently displayed viewports show
giving you the freedom to use the 4 viewports as normal but lock-in a
separate view (5th) for rendering.
Your approach requires that what you render is displayed (on screen) as one
of the 4 viewports leaving you with the remaining 3 to work with.

Once you've setup the render view you want, you don't need to worry about
what's on screen since the renderer will use the un-displayed viewport
previously configured.

The situation that prompted me to post the question originally was that I
needed a way to lock down the render view so it would not get changed since
I needed multiple renders from the exact same view but i didn't want to
lose one of my only 4 viewports to the camera -* I wanted 4 views + the
camera*. My approach does this and although my description was LONG (sorry
about that, but I wanted it to be clear), it's not a complicated process
and only takes seconds.

[Anonymous]

You are right, it's very easy to create a new layout (it's in bottom left by default in max 2018)

I found it not easy because of my lack of knowledge but it's not that complicated, a right clic on the custom layout enable to rename it

Thanks again for your help The Xennon 😉

[Anonymous]

To solve the problem of rendering through a viewport/camera and working from another you could just <<Disable>> the working viewport.

Hotkey to disable viewport: D