In-Canvas vs. Cloud vs. Local Rendering

Comparing the three rendering options in Fusion 360.

In-Canvas, Cloud, and Local are three rendering options within Fusion 360.

TLDR: In-Canvas should be used to get a quick sense of what your render is looking like and adjust camera position/angle, scene setttings, and appearances. Cloud should be used for final renders.

In-Canvas Rendering

In Canvas

In-Canvas creates a low fidelity, real-time render of your model within the Fusion rendering environment. While this does produce lower quality results than Local or Cloud renders as it does not utilize ray tracing and can simplify the lighting based on the settings, it is an extremely useful tool for checking lighting, appearances, scene settings, and camera angles.

1. Select "Fast" or "Advanced" from the In-Canvas settings menu.

Fast reduces the material and lighting data, allowing the render to be executed faster, but at a much lower quality than what would be outputted in the advanced setting.

Selecting the options for In-Canvas render

2. Start the render by clicking the icon with the sphere and the green arrow.

Starting an In-Canvas Render

The In-Canvas Render can be paused by pressing the pause button at the lower right and can be stopped by clicking the icon with the sphere and the red stop button.

Cloud Rendering

Local Rendering