Open SolidCraft above to try it in your browser, or download it for your desktop. This guide explains how to render a product image in SolidCraft: the Render workspace, the three image methods, lighting, saved setups and PNG export. Everything here comes from SolidCraft's official documentation (version v0.21.0, released 24 October 2026), linked at the bottom.
If you have not modelled a part yet, start with the SolidCraft tutorial.
Open the Render workspace
Finish your modelling operation, then choose Render in the workspace switcher. SolidCraft shows a separate product scene: your visible bodies with their colours, materials and face appearances, but no grid, axes, edge lines, sketches, selection highlights or section cuts. The browser's visibility toggles still decide which bodies appear.
The camera moves exactly as it does in Design: your navigation preset, zoom to cursor, SpaceMouse, F6, axis views and the navigation cube all work. Fit Product frames the visible bodies only. When you go back to Design, your Design camera is restored.
The panel has two views:
- Live Preview shows the product camera with a fixed studio look. It does not apply your image exposure, environment or lens settings.
- Render Result shows the last finished image (or the current progressive pass). Fit Image frames it and 100% shows one image pixel per screen pixel.
Pick an image method
SolidCraft offers three image methods. Check and Start are only enabled when your installation supports the chosen method. It never quietly falls back to a different one.
| Method | Best for | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| CPU raster | Quick previews | Fast PNG with approximate transparency. Not a glass renderer. |
| CPU ray tracing | Clean shaded shots on any machine | Single image with 1, 4 or 16 samples per pixel, or progressive 1–64 samples; three lighting presets; cast shadows; HDR or constant environments; directional and point lights. Needs a native build with the ray tracing feature. |
| GPU path tracing | Final product images | Progressive 1–4096 samples, path depth 1–16, Reinhard or ACES tone mapping, optional denoise, thin-lens depth of field, glass, clear coat and texture maps. Vulkan only. |
Exposure runs from −16 to +16 EV for CPU ray tracing and −32 to +32 EV for GPU path tracing. One exposure field controls whichever method is active.
GPU path tracing and Vulkan
The path tracer runs on Vulkan only. On Windows with a D3D12 viewport, SolidCraft reopens the same GPU through Vulkan. Where there is no Vulkan driver (macOS for now, Windows over Remote Desktop, the WARP software adapter, older drivers) the GPU method shows as unavailable and you render on the CPU instead. Your GPU settings stay editable and saveable either way.
The official notes measured an RTX 4090: Vulkan keeps its compiled shaders between runs, while D3D12 recompiled the path shader on every start.
Light the scene
- Lighting presets: CPU ray tracing offers Neutral, Warm and cool, and Key and rim.
- Custom studio lighting (GPU): a constant environment colour, a sun with a finite radius, and up to four rectangular area lights placed in millimetres.
- Environment: none, a built-in sky gradient, or your own Radiance .hdr panorama. The HDR must be at most 16 MiB and 2048 × 1024 in a 2:1 ratio. EXR is not supported. Rotation and intensity change the lighting, while the saved background stays as the backdrop.
Pick a file and SolidCraft checks it first (size, colour primaries, intensity). If the file changes on disk later, it asks you to check it again before rendering.
Glass, clear coat and textures (GPU)
The GPU image materials section assigns optics to whole bodies:
- Glass: six starter recipes, or manual IOR, RGB absorption and thin-sheet thickness. Up to eight glass bodies.
- Clear coat: weight, roughness and IOR over the existing base colour. Up to 64 bodies.
- Planar maps: your own PNG or JPEG base colour and OpenGL normal maps, up to 1024 × 1024 each. Up to 16 mapped bodies.
One thing to know: these assignments are temporary for the open tab. They are not saved in the design or in a render setup yet, and you must turn them off before switching to a CPU method.
Save a render setup
The right panel holds a named setup: camera, background, output size and the active method. Save Setup stores it in the design as one undo step. Type a new name to Save As, pick an existing name to load it, and use Restore Saved Camera to jump back to the saved view.
An HDR you checked is embedded into the design when you save, so the setup still works after the original file is gone. A design can hold up to 64 resources and 64 MiB.
Start, cancel and export a PNG
- Click Check to confirm the method, scene and size are accepted.
- Click Start. Progress shows by phase (preparing, running, encoding), not as a time estimate.
- Progressive methods show provisional passes as they improve. Cancel stops the job and keeps your previous finished image.
- Click Export PNG. Overwriting an existing file is an explicit option.
The image always describes the model as it was when you pressed Start. If you edit the model afterwards, the result canvas warns that the render is from an earlier revision.
CPU image size is capped at 4096 pixels per side and 4 million pixels. Progressive CPU ray tracing is limited to about one million pixels. Turn off Transparent background before using progressive CPU ray tracing, because it needs an opaque background.
Render from the command line or an AI agent
The SolidCraft CLI renders without opening the app:
solidcraft-cli render design.solidcraft --setup Studio --out product.png --transparent
The default wait is 120 seconds (--timeout 1..3600), and --overwrite is needed to replace an existing file. A headless SolidCraft MCP session can run the same render commands, so Claude or another agent can produce product shots for you.
What is still in progress
The official docs mark parts of rendering as drafts: combined CPU, browser and GPU verification is not complete, and a built-in render library (48 surfaces, 24 HDR environments, lighting rigs) is prepared but not yet a validated release. Expect the controls to keep changing between versions. If you need printable output rather than pictures, see SolidCraft for 3D printing.