Enscape is designed to allow the process of rendering an image quick and easy, not requiring any user to have an in-depth knowledge of rendering processes and techniques. This means a user doesn’t  have to spend a lot of time adjusting a large range of settings to produce a good quality image.

To begin, you must start the Enscape viewport. This can be done by clicking on the Start button located within the Enscape toolbar in Vectorworks.

Once the Enscape window is open and is running you will see the Enscape Viewport toolbar at the top of that window, which means you are ready to start rendering.

If you can’t see the toolbar at the top of the Enscape viewport, then click on the small arrow / chevron seen in the middle of the toolbar above, which will expand / collapse the toolbar.

If the Enscape window doesn’t open at all, check that your system meets our recommended System Requirements.

For the Batch Rendering button to become available you will need to have created at least one View via the View Management panel. Having done that, the Batch Rendering button will become available. If no Views are available, this button is grayed out and therefore disabled.

For more details on the Batch Rendering process, please click here.

Furthermore, you have the option to further customize your renderings with a watermark and other options via the Enscape General Settings’  Customization options.

As already mentioned, setting the Resolution to ‘UltraHD’ will give you a high resolution image, but if you then also set the Rendering Quality slider in the Visual Settings’ – Main tab to Ultra, this will give you the highest quality image possible.

However, setting Rendering Quality to High or even Medium is generally recommended when using Enscape in real-time to save on GPU resources. You can adjust this to be higher when it comes to rendering the image out if required. If you suffer from crashes when rendering images out to file from Enscape, then look to lower both Resolution and Rendering Quality to FullHD and High respectively.

All settings (e.g. Fog, Depth of Field, etc.) are the same for both rendered images and real time output.

If Rendering Quality is set to Draft, then there will be no glass reflections in the final render.

Under the Image tab of the Visual Settings dialog the Auto Contrast setting is disabled by default, allowing you to adjust the strength of the Highlights and Shadows in your render. Enabling Auto Contrast will hide these sliders and apply optimal contrast to the image.

So, you will still be able to navigate your project when Show Safe Frame is enabled.

In the following screenshot, as way of an example, the Resolution is set to a Custom: 500×2000.

When active, Enscape will export four images for each image or View – the rendered image as seen in the Enscape window itself, a second image that’s graded from white to black, depending on the distance from the camera (Depth Channel) and third and fourth rendering that assigns a distinctive color to each object (Object-ID), material (Material-ID), :

You can use the Object-ID and Material-ID image to post process parts of your image. Let’s say you’ve closed the project, all renderings are done, but you realize one element looks too dark. Instead of having to reopen and recreate everything, you can simply create a mask using that specific color, allowing you to post process only that part of the image.

Additionally, the black background can be used as an Alpha channel to conveniently extract your actual model and place it in a photograph, although you may find it easier to use the Apply Alpha Channel option instead.

The Depth Map can be used to apply depth-related effects to your rendering.

All of these actions can be performed in many advanced image editing software – Enscape only delivers the renderings.

Batch Rendering of images takes place when you click the Batch Rendering button. For more information on this topic, please click here.