Just render a section of scene in real size

chriswrcg

I have a scene that has a lot of geometry to it. This means I am having a render time of over an hour for the final render.  I would like to tweek the characters expression but dont really want to do a full render again.  Is there a way to render just a portion of the scene and have it come out full render size instead of just using the slice render window that just renders the image as it apears in the viewport?

Richard Haseltine

Use the Spot render tool, in Tool Settings enable the option to render to a new window. If you save as PNG or Tiff you will then get a mask/selection you can use to layer the small section on top of the main render.

Gordig

Be aware that, depending on the scene, the spot render tool may not look exactly the same as the full render.

fred9803

I use the Spot Render tool to do my whole render as my screen resolution is very high and don't need images any larger than that. That means when I need to do tweak spot renders they will fit exactly to the right place when I paste them.

ShelLuser

Depending on the engine you're using you can also consider using Filiament as the viewport renderer. It doesn't take up much time at all and gives a good usable impression for Iray renders and, to some degree, also 3Delight ("sorta", it leans more towards Iray but can still be usable here too I think). 

Maybe food for thought?

If you do go this route then don't forget to add a filiament node (I don't know the exact name from mind, see the 'create' menu) in order to tone down the scene lighting, otherwise you'll get a heavily overexposed viewport.