How does rendering work in Blender?

Rendering is the process of turning a 3D scene into a finished image or video. To render a scene, Blender needs to perform various calculations to visualize all materials, light rays, reflections, shadows, and more. To get a preview of what a scene would look like with its current lighting, materials, and shadows, we can use rendered viewport shading. Figure 14.1 shows the same image with solid viewport shading and rendered viewport shading.

Figure 14.1 – Solid and rendered viewport shading

Note that using rendered viewport shading gives us only a preview of the rendered scene and will not allow us to export a final image in any quality higher than that of a screenshot. To render a scene, we must press F12 or use the Render menu in the top pane of the screen, as shown in Figure 14.2.

Figure 14.2 – Rendering an image

This will produce a result likely very similar to the render...