When creating simple animatics (flat-colored mesh solids), what’s the best lighting layout to fully-light the scene such that you can see it, without slowing down render times? Ideally the rendered scene would look pretty much like how the 3D view “solid” shading looks.
I usually just throw point lights around with “no shadow” toggled, but that takes lots of lights when there’s irregular shapes, or lots of them, like stadium seats in an auditorium.
Answered my own question; just had to find the right thing to Google for: since I wanted just what the 3D viewport looks like, the answer to my setup is to use the OpenGL render option. That would be the camera/clapboard icons at the end of the 3D viewport header bar.
I found that and other simplification ideas for doing quick pre-visualizations at this Blender Cookie article: http://cgcookie.com/blender/2009/04/06/efficient-preview-rendering/
yep, renders from viewport work great. It’s worth noting the “only render” option under Display, which gets rid of outlines, relationship lines etc.
The ability to render out Grease Pencil annotations is also great for animation tests.
Good pro tip; that really cleans up the display!