Rendering and Animation#

This section covers turning a finished model into images and motion. It starts with appearances and physical materials, decals and texture controls, then scene settings, the environment, camera and depth of field.

It continues with In-Canvas Render for quick previews, the choice between local and cloud rendering and render quality, and a checklist for photoreal output. The Animation workspace pages cover exploded views, the storyboard, component transforms and publishing video. It suits beginners and intermediate users.

Pages in this section#

1. Appearances and Physical Materials (beginner): How appearances and physical materials differ, how to apply and edit them, and how they drive both renders and engineering results.
2. Decals and Texture Map Controls (beginner): Place logos and labels with Decal, and tune tiling, scale and rotation of texture images with Texture Map Controls.
3. Scene Settings and Environment (intermediate): Control lighting, backgrounds, ground plane, exposure and output size with Scene Settings and the environment library.
4. Camera and Depth of Field (intermediate): Frame shots with perspective, named views and focal settings, and use depth of field to add photographic realism.
5. In-Canvas Render (beginner): Use the live ray-traced preview in the canvas to tune materials, lighting and framing, and capture images quickly.
6. Local vs Cloud Render and Render Quality (intermediate): Choose between local and cloud rendering, understand quality presets, cloud credits, the Render Gallery and output options.
7. Animation Workspace and Exploded Views (intermediate): Create exploded views with Auto Explode One Level, All Levels and Manual Explode in the Animation workspace.
8. Storyboard, Transforms and Publishing Video (intermediate): Build animations with the storyboard timeline, Transform Components, visibility and callouts, then publish video.
9. Tips for Photorealistic Output (advanced): A practical checklist for modelling, material, lighting and camera choices that make Fusion renders look like photographs.

Before you start#

Autodesk states that cloud rendering requires tokens depending on the settings you choose; see the local versus cloud render page.

Confirmed vs not confirmed#

Not confirmed in Autodesk's documentation: Personal-use differences for in-canvas or cloud rendering, which licenses include cloud rendering tokens, whether closing Fusion stops a local render, which display settings decals need, how grounded components behave in Animation, and whether published video is ray traced.