# How to perform 3D-cinematic rendering?

**URL:** <https://discourse.slicer.org/t/how-to-perform-3d-cinematic-rendering/7313>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [June 26, 2019, 1:12pm UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/how-to-perform-3d-cinematic-rendering/7313 "2019-06-26T13:12:28Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 5

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**Author:** ![lassoan](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex002/user_avatar/discourse.slicer.org/lassoan/32/13_2.png) [@lassoan](https://discourse.slicer.org/u/lassoan)\
**Post date:** [June 27, 2019, 4:52am UTC](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/how-to-perform-3d-cinematic-rendering/7313/5 "2019-06-27T04:52:07Z")

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> [@Chris\_Rorden](#):
>
> A very simple but robust approach that can make both CT and MRI renderings look fancy is to use MatCaps. These are very easy to implement

Implementation of surface mesh rendering is certainly easy and photorealistic rendering is widely available in various software applications. If creating of surface mesh (=model node) is not a problem then of course this approach may work well. Surface mesh files can be generated directly from segmentations using “Export to files” feature in Segment Editor.

However, most often creating a surface mesh requires significant effort and many cases (e.g., CT volumes) a number of structures can be displayed directly by volume rendering.

Anyway, if we decide to expose VTK’s photorealistic rendering engine (OSPray) in Slicer (see [here](https://discourse.slicer.org/t/is-there-interest-in-higher-quality-rendering-for-slicer/6862/5)) then it will be usable for both surface rendering and volume rendering.

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