Enscape is different from Rhino Render, VRay, etc, because this software essentially lets you navigate your Rhino model like a video game. Enscape has a number of useful aspects, including the built-in library of entourage (people, trees, cars, furniture, etc.), and also that it is a real-time renderer, so you can see what your model looks like without having to wait for a full render to complete, and then repeat when you change a material.
Enscape Rhino Material Editor
Download Enscape for Rhino
Currently Enscape is only available for Windows, so Mac users who are interested in making animations, please see my post about animating in Rhino. You may apply for an educational license to Enscape here with your IIT email address. In the meantime, you can use the software free for 14 days.
Likes Received 2,660 Posts 7,928 Location Karlsruhe, Germany Revit Version 2020 SketchUp Version Pro 2020 Rhino Version 6.0 ArchiCAD Version 24. With Enscape and its Rhino plug-in, you can integrate real-time rendering and VR into your workflow, helping to significantly improve and speed up the entire design process. Enscape offers free educational licenses to both students and classrooms.
Sun | Rhino’s Explanation of the Sun Control
This sun location and angle are important for any rendering, especially if “north” in your model does not correspond to actual north. Set the angle to match which way is North in your model and set the location to Chicago, so that rhino has the right sun angle. You can set the time of day in the sun settings or in enscape.
Materials | Enscape page on materials.
Enscape can use the same materials that you used for rhino render or vray, or you can make ones with the enscape material editor. If you are only using the rendering for shade and shadow, and you plan to do most of your rendering work in photoshop, then you likely need to just focus on the transparency and reflectivity. Setting your view to polystyrol or white in the Rendering tab of the Visual Settings Panel will ignore any colors in your materials to give you a base render to collage onto in photoshop.
Entourage
The built-in entourage library has a good selection of plants, people, cars, furniture, etc., with which to populate your model for rendering. These blocks will appear as lower resolution mesh objects in your rhino model, but they will render at a higher resolution in Enscape.
Lights | Encape’s instructions.
If you are making interior images, or the interior of your building appears too dark, you can add Rhino light objects in your model. The brightness of these lights can be set in the light’s properties, and you can set the general level of “artificial light brightness” in the Atmosphere tab of the Visual Settings Panel. You can also make emmisive materials that give off their own light, and adjust the luminosity in the Enscape Material Editor.
Render an image | Here are Enscape’s instructions.
The “render image” button is located in the Enscape Capturing Toolbar
Make a video/animation | Enscape’s Instructions for making a video/animation.
Animations in Enscape are made by creating “keyframe” views, and the software will draw an interpolated path through these keyframes to create a smooth animation. The enscape viewer will allow you to see the path that enscape is drawing, and adjust/add keyframes to edit the path of the animation. I recommend you start with a short and simple two keyframe path, to test the features, timing, etc, and work up from there. The instructions linked above are pretty comprehensive and easy to follow, but I will hold a Q+A and troubleshooting session next week to provide assistance if you are having trouble.
Enscape For Rhino Mac
Material & Object ID:
These will give you useful images to include in photoshop and will assist in masking and selecting items. If you have used vray, you may be familiar with this feature.
Here is an overview of some of the key functions and settings in the Enscape Toolbars and Visual Settings Panel.
Enscape should automatically add its toolbars to Rhino when you install it, but if not, you can add them in the Rhino Properties -> Toolbars menu.
Enscape Rhino Machine
Questions?
If you have questions, please post them here in the comments section, or attend the Q+A session.