As a new user, one of the single most painful aspects of Cheetah is the "render manager" and it's lack of features and integration into the software. Using a separate window to view renders slows me down massively between iterations and even with keyboard shortcuts set up (where possible), it's just a hassle.
So a few suggestions:
Integrate rendering into the actual main application. Why isn't the render view just another pane or tab I can add to the main window (either tiled or as a tab)? This would enable two very elementary features. First, navigation. This has been mentioned plenty of times, but was never addressed. Use the gestures already available for the 3D or Node editor to zoom and pan across rendered images. The second is preview rendering, viewing your effects live, which speeds up any workflow. Preview rendering unlocks so, so many workflow benefits. Previewing any change becomes a breeze: designing a material? preview it's effect live, changing light intesity? preview its ... you get the idea.
Rendering presets: Currently, there's no way to switch between "preview" level renders and full renders. Please allow us to set up presets or levels so that a quick render can be triggered (or is triggered live in line with the suggestion above), and a full render can be triggered separately. I may want to change multiple rendering parameters between these levels and doing so manually is tedious. Also mentioned before, though I don't think this has to be automatic. Also why can't I assign a keyboard shortcut to "stop render", and why doesn't the "show render manager" shortcut also work for dismissing it?
Spot rendering (mentioned before), would also work best when used in an integrated rendering view with a "preview" level: allow selection of areas to render at "full detail" level. Indigo does this really well (they call it "flexible region rendering"). Sometimes I just want to check a particular thing, like a caustic or shadow cast by something to validate my full level rendering settings, without waiting for the entire scene.
And finally, and much less important: network rendering (also somewhat mentioned before as resumable renders). I model on my MacBook Pro, but I want to send stuff to my Mac Studio for rendering since it's a lot faster. Currently working around this using screensharing and iCloud, but having an instance of Cheetah run "headless" on the render server and getting the results back locally would be awesome.
So a few suggestions:
Integrate rendering into the actual main application. Why isn't the render view just another pane or tab I can add to the main window (either tiled or as a tab)? This would enable two very elementary features. First, navigation. This has been mentioned plenty of times, but was never addressed. Use the gestures already available for the 3D or Node editor to zoom and pan across rendered images. The second is preview rendering, viewing your effects live, which speeds up any workflow. Preview rendering unlocks so, so many workflow benefits. Previewing any change becomes a breeze: designing a material? preview it's effect live, changing light intesity? preview its ... you get the idea.
Rendering presets: Currently, there's no way to switch between "preview" level renders and full renders. Please allow us to set up presets or levels so that a quick render can be triggered (or is triggered live in line with the suggestion above), and a full render can be triggered separately. I may want to change multiple rendering parameters between these levels and doing so manually is tedious. Also mentioned before, though I don't think this has to be automatic. Also why can't I assign a keyboard shortcut to "stop render", and why doesn't the "show render manager" shortcut also work for dismissing it?
Spot rendering (mentioned before), would also work best when used in an integrated rendering view with a "preview" level: allow selection of areas to render at "full detail" level. Indigo does this really well (they call it "flexible region rendering"). Sometimes I just want to check a particular thing, like a caustic or shadow cast by something to validate my full level rendering settings, without waiting for the entire scene.
And finally, and much less important: network rendering (also somewhat mentioned before as resumable renders). I model on my MacBook Pro, but I want to send stuff to my Mac Studio for rendering since it's a lot faster. Currently working around this using screensharing and iCloud, but having an instance of Cheetah run "headless" on the render server and getting the results back locally would be awesome.