---
title: Render Engine
order: 10
---

Chisel has its own render engine. It draws Chisel shapes on the graphics card from their exact shape rather than from triangles, so surfaces stay smooth at any zoom.

## Render Engine

![the Render Engine list with Chisel](../assets/rendersettings-pickrenderer.webp)

| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| **Render Engine** | Blender's engine list in *Properties ▸ Render*. The engine is set per scene. |
| **Chisel** | The Chisel engine. Every scene with Chisel shapes needs it. |

The first frame after you switch to Chisel waits while its shaders compile; see [Shader compilation](../getting-started/installation.md#shader-compilation).

## Viewport shading

| Shading | What you see |
|---|---|
| **Material Preview** | Chisel shapes shaded with the scene [matcap](matcap.md), each tinted by its [material](../materials/panel.md) colour. |
| **Rendered** | The same shapes over the World's *Viewport Display* colour: the look of an [F12 render](f12-render.md). |
| **Solid**, **Wireframe** | Blender's drawing of the [proxy meshes](display.md#proxy-mesh), not the Chisel surface. |

Blender's overlays, gizmos and grease pencil draw on top as usual. Plain meshes, such as the startup cube, are not drawn in *Material Preview* or *Rendered*: only their selection outline shows.

## Render panels

With **Chisel** chosen, *Properties ▸ Render* shows these panels, top to bottom:

| Panel | What it holds |
|---|---|
| [Matcap](matcap.md) | The matcap, its specular layer and a tint |
| [Quality](quality.md) | Steps, hit threshold, max distance, viewport resolution, detail size |
| [Performance](performance.md) | Auto Cell Size and the faster picture while you move |
| [Display](display.md) | How new targets look, Render Region, proxy meshes, mesh-SDF storage |
| [Gizmos](gizmo-settings.md) | A switch for every gizmo |
| [Bake](baking.md) | Normal, mask, height and diffuse maps |

Blender's own *Simplify*, *Grease Pencil*, *Freestyle* and *Color Management* panels sit between them; Chisel does not use them. [F12 Render](f12-render.md) has no panel of its own.

## Speed

- **Use Vulkan.** OpenGL is much slower.
- **Lower *Resolution*** ([Quality](quality.md)) before *Max Steps*, and *Min Resolution* ([Performance](performance.md)) for smoother orbits.
- **Lower *Subdivision Level*** before raising *World Cell Size* when booleans slow a scene down.