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04. Rendering & Content Creation Tools

The Content Creation Tool provides automated batch rendering, turntable animation, and panoramic image generation for USD scenes in Overtools. It renders all configured variant combinations and outputs high-quality images with customizable naming, resolution, and rendering settings.

Getting Started

Open the Contents Renderer from the main menu: Overtools > Contents Renderer.

Before rendering, ensure that: 1. Your scene has the desired variant sets configured (see Configuration Tool). 2. A valid Overtools license is active.

Main Window

The Contents Renderer consists of a top navigation bar with five panel buttons and a scrollable content area below.

Panel Description
Variants Select which variant combinations to render.
Settings Configure output resolution, renderer, and render quality.
Batch render Render all variant combinations from a single camera.
Turntable Generate 360° rotating views at multiple angles.
Panorama Produce panoramic / equirectangular renderings.

Variants Panel

The Variants panel lets you select which variant sets and variants to include in the rendering batch. The renderer generates images for every combination of the selected variants.

Usage: 1. Click Add variant set to add a variant set from your scene. 2. Within each variant set, use the + dropdown to add specific variants. 3. Remove individual variants with the X button, or remove an entire variant set with Remove.

If no variant sets are available in the scene, the panel displays "No variant set available".

Example: If you select 3 visibility variants and 2 material variants, the batch renderer will produce 3 × 2 = 6 images (one for every combination).

Settings Panel

The Settings panel configures the global render parameters shared across batch, turntable, and panorama rendering.

Output Settings

Setting Description Default
Output folder Destination directory for rendered images. Supports local and Omniverse/Nucleus paths. Stage file directory
Overwrite existing files When enabled, existing files with the same name are replaced. Enabled

Renderer Settings

Setting Description Default
Renderer The rendering engine to use. Available options depend on your system: RTX – Real-Time, RTX – Interactive (Path Tracing), RTX – Real-Time 2.0. A gear button opens RTX Settings for fine-tuning. First available
Render max frames Maximum number of frames to wait for the render to converge before capturing the image. Higher values produce cleaner results but take longer. 512

Expanding the renderer section reveals additional renderer-specific parameters.

Camera Settings

Setting Description Default
Output resolution Width × Height in pixels. 1920 × 1080
Render Scale Percentage multiplier for the output resolution. Presets: 200%, 100%, 66%, 50%, 33%, 25%, Custom. 100%

When Custom is selected for Render Scale, a text field appears for entering an arbitrary percentage value.

Batch Render Panel

The Batch Render panel renders all variant combinations from a single camera viewpoint.

Camera Selection

Select the rendering camera from the Camera dropdown, which lists: - All cameras defined in the USD stage. - Default viewport cameras (OmniverseKit_Persp, Top, Front, Right) — sorted last.

File Naming

Configure how output files are named:

Setting Description Default
Output file naming Base filename for rendered images. (empty)
File extension Image format: .tga, .png, or .exr. .png
Variants separator Character separating variant set and variant names in the filename. Invalid characters (<>:"/\|?*) are rejected. _
Image number padding Number of digits for zero-padded image numbering (0–9). 0

Keywords — Insert dynamic placeholders into the filename by selecting from the Keyword dropdown and clicking +:

Keyword Placeholder Description
Date ${date} Current date
Image number ${imageNumber} Sequential image number
Image height ${imageHeight} Output height in pixels
Image width ${imageWidth} Output width in pixels
Time ${time} Current time
VariantSets only ${variantSetsOnly} Names of active variant sets
Variants only ${variantsOnly} Names of active variants
VariantSets with variants ${variantSetsWithVariants} Full variant set + variant names

An Example label at the bottom shows a live preview of the resulting filename.

Running a Batch Render

  1. Configure variants, settings, camera, and file naming.
  2. Click Batch render to start.
  3. A progress bar appears showing completion percentage (0–100%).
  4. Click Stop at any time to cancel the batch.

Notifications: - "Batch rendering started." - "Batch rendering completed." - "Batch rendering canceled." (if stopped manually)

Turntable Panel

The Turntable panel generates 360° rotating camera views around a center point, at multiple vertical and horizontal angles.

Camera Position

Setting Description Default
Start position Camera starting position (X, Y, Z) in scene units. [100, 100, 100]
Rotation center The point the camera orbits around (X, Y, Z). [0, 0, 0]

Camera Range Presets

Quick presets for common turntable configurations:

Preset Horizontal Range Vertical Range
Custom User-defined User-defined
SemiHorizontal -90° to 90° 0°
FullHorizontal -180° to 180° 0°
SemiVertical 0° -45° to 45°
FullVertical 0° -90° to 90°

Angle Ranges

When using the Custom preset, configure the camera sweep ranges:

  • Horizontal (°) — Min and Max angles for the horizontal orbit.
  • Vertical (°) — Min and Max angles for the vertical tilt.
  • Is Relative checkbox — When enabled, angles are relative to the start position rather than absolute.

Steps Configuration

Control how many images are generated within the angle range:

Mode Description
Count (#) Specify the total number of images. The angle range is divided evenly.
Max (°) Specify the maximum angle per step. The number of images varies based on the total range.
Exact (°) Specify a fixed angle increment between each frame.

Separate step values can be set for horizontal and vertical axes.

Running a Turntable Render

  1. Set the camera position and rotation center.
  2. Choose a preset or configure custom angle ranges and steps.
  3. Configure file naming (same options as Batch Render).
  4. Click Turntable render to start.
  5. A progress bar tracks the rendering progress.
  6. Click Stop to cancel.

The tool creates a temporary TurntableCamera prim in the session layer, copying properties (focal length, focus distance, f-stop) from the current camera. For each keypoint in the turntable sequence, the camera is repositioned and a frame is rendered.

Panorama Panel

The Panorama panel generates panoramic (equirectangular) 360° renderings from a specified viewpoint.

Camera Setup

Setting Description Default
Start position Camera position (X, Y, Z). —
Start orientation (°) Rotation angle around the vertical axis. 0°

Helper buttons: - From camera — Copies the position from the current viewport camera. - From selected — Computes the center of the selected prim's bounding box.

The camera projection is automatically set to fisheye spherical mode for full 360° capture. The aspect ratio is forced to 2:1 (width × 0.5 = height) for equirectangular output.

Running a Panorama Render

  1. Set the camera position and orientation.
  2. Configure file naming (same options as Batch Render).
  3. Click Panorama render to start.
  4. A progress bar tracks progress.
  5. Click Stop to cancel.

If variant sets are selected in the Variants panel, the panorama is rendered for each variant combination.

Output Formats

Three image formats are supported:

Format Extension Description
TGA .tga Targa — uncompressed raster format.
PNG .png Portable Network Graphics — lossless compressed format.
EXR .exr OpenEXR — high dynamic range format for compositing workflows.

Rendering Pipeline

All rendering modes (batch, turntable, panorama) follow the same internal pipeline:

  1. Initialization — Fetches all variant sets from the stage and stores the current configuration for later restoration. The viewport selection is cleared.
  2. Configuration — Generates all variant combinations from the selected variants. Viewport elements (grid, HUD, lights, cameras) are hidden for clean output.
  3. For each variant combination:
  4. The variant configuration is applied to the stage.
  5. The system waits for asynchronous model loading to complete.
  6. The viewport is configured with the target resolution, render scale, camera, and renderer.
  7. A DLSS reset is triggered to ensure clean frame rendering.
  8. The image is captured after waiting for the configured number of render frames.
  9. Completion — Original viewport settings and variant selections are restored.

Progress updates are reported through the progress bar, and the render can be canceled at any point.