How To Hide Objects From Your Renders?

Not all objects we create in Blender will always be for our final renders. Sometimes we can create different test renders of our scenes with different objects. Therefore, to streamline such a process, we need the ability to be able to hide objects from our renders so that we don’t have to move or delete them.

We can hide any object from our final render by going to the outliner panel and then clicking on the camera icon next to the name of that object. This icon represents the render visibility of that model. Turning this icon off will turn the visibility of that selected object off in the final render.

The ability to hide objects from your final render can be an essential step in previewing. Hiding objects from the final render can be just as valuable as hiding them from the 3D viewport.

Hiding Objects From Your Renders In The Outliner?

Hiding your objects from your final renders is just as easy as hiding them from the 3D viewport. All we need to do is go to our outliner panel and locate the object that we wish to hide from our render.

Every object in your scene, as well as every collection, will have a camera icon located next to it. This camera icon represents the render visibility of that object.

The Render Icon

If we left-click on this camera icon, it is replaced with the outline and then an X in the center. This will indicate that the render visibility for that specific object or collection has been turned off.

For example, let’s say we have a monkey mesh on top of a circular pedestal. If we attend a typical render, we could see our pedestal and Suzanne object.

Render Of Suzanne On Stand

Now let’s go back to our outliner panel and turn off the render visibility for Suzanne. Render the image again without changing any of the other settings, and you will notice that Suzanne has disappeared.

Hiding Suzanne From Render

This is despite the fact that Suzanne is still perfectly visible within the 3D viewport. The only change we have made is that we have told Blender not to render Suzanne.

No Suzanne In Render

How Is This Different From Hiding Objects In The Viewport?

The ability to hide objects from your renders and the ability to hide objects from the 3D viewport are two different tools. They both do the same thing, but they are independent of each other.

This means that hiding an object from your final render is not going to hide it from the 3D viewport, and hiding the 3D objects from the viewport is not going to hide it from the render.

The Eye Icon Is For The Viewport, And The Camera Is For The Render

This can actually cause a few issues for beginners who initially hired their objects in the 3D viewport but don’t realize that the objects are not hidden in the render, and then when they go to process the image of their scene, they find that their hidden images are visible in their renders.

Does This Apply To All Object Types?

You will notice that all object types that are visible in the outliner panel will have the same toggles as each other in terms of their visibility and selectability.

This includes object types that are not used for modeling, such as camera and light objects.

With these object types, we are not toggling the rendering ability of the object itself since these objects cannot themselves be rendered and made visible. However, we can toggle their effect, particularly with light objects.

Same Scene With No Dedicated Light Source

If we were to turn off the rendering ability of our only light source for our scene and render our image, you would notice that no light is generated. This is because while the object has no geometry, it does have an influence in the form of lighting, and it’s this influence that we can determine as renderable or not.

Thanks For Reading

We appreciate you taking the time to read through the article, and we hope you found the information you were looking for. If you are interested in learning more about rendering objects in Blender, take a look at a few of the articles we’ve listed below.

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