Sky, you can set DS to render to a new window. This gives you a second window that contains the rendered product/image in it, and when it finishes, you can then control where the picture saves to. I know there's a way to set up a folder for the render to automatically be written to, but I have to admit I haven't used that method like.. ever.
This method is more like what you might be familiar with from Poser...
1.) Go up to the top of your DS window. Click on Render --> Render Settings.
A new window will open up in DS. This is what you should be looking at :
2.) Click on the button that says "Editor." Now, by default, the "General" category will be collapsed. Expand it by clicking on the triangle.
3.) Then click on "Destination."
4.) "Render Type" allows you to tell DS what type of render it's going; still images, image series, or movie. Since you did produce a couple of small animations, I'm going to guess that you found that property already? And if not, there it is! LOL
Below that you will see "Render Target." I believe, by default, this is set to render to a file? I honestly can't remember, it's been that long. LOL Anyway. Click in the box for the Render Target, and you can then choose "New Window," like this :
That will then produce your image in a second window, the next time you render a scene. And in that second window, there will be boxes at the bottom, below the rendered image, where you can type in the name to save the render as, and choose a folder to save it into. You can also close that window without saving the render, if you don't like how it came out.
This is also where you choose the size of your rendered image; you can click on "Dimensions," and either set your own custom render dimensions, use the active scene window as the render dimensions, or use one of the template sizes that DS has in the list.
Another couple things to note on the render settings for Studio...
Progressive Rendering -
This is, again, what you might be more used to with Poser, where you can see the render building up as it goes through the render process. I like this mode, because it enables me to get an idea of how a scene is coming out. And if I really don't like the way it's turning out, I can cancel the render, rather than waiting or an hour or more for it to finish.
Progressive rendering is a simple one-button press to enable it. By default, it is NOT enabled, and DS simply produces the entire image at once, after chewing on it for a while. To enable progressive rendering...
1.) Go into your Render Settings
2.) Click on "Progressive" in the left hand column.
3.) Now click the box that appears on the right, so that it says "on."
Yup, that's all there is to it for that one. Nice and easy.
Buckets, Sampling, and Shading Rate are probably going to be your most used settings here, other than the dimensions.
I normally leave my options set to the default, 32 buckets. Trying to do 64 seems to cause crashes on my computer for some weird reason, so I just leave it set at 32.
Sampling is something you'll not need to mess with unless you are doing depth of field renders. If doing a DOF render, you'll need to turn the x and y samples up to about 20-25. I normally run a DOF render with my pixel samples set to at LEAST 25, sometimes as high as 30. The higher the samples value, the longer the render will take. For regular (no DOF) renders, you can leave these samples set down aroune 4 or 5. But if doing a DOF render, you need the higher samples value, otherwise the DOF effects will come out looking kind of like stained or frosted glass, instead of a proper depth of field blur.
Shading Rate works just like Poser. The lower the number, the longer the render will take, but the more accurate the shadowing. I normally render with a shading rate value of about 0.20; in some cases I might drop it as far down as 0.10.
Max Raytrace Sampling -
I normally render with this set to 4. By default, it's only set to 2. This is also found under the "Sampling" part of your Render settings window.
Just some tidbits regarding the render window.
As far as the grey blocks go - DS spits out PNG format renders; the grey blocks will not be present in your final render. You only see it inside of DS, in the window, if you've rendered a single object without putting anything else in the scene, but if you were to save that picture, it would be a transparent PNG - no blocks.
Hope that helps.
