Render off-screen SCNScene into UIImage

Question

How can I render render an off-screen SCNScene into a UIImage?

I know that SCNView provides a -snapshot method, but unfortunately that doesn't work for off-screen views. A similar question have been asked before where one of the answers suggest reading the bitmap data from OpenGL using glReadPixels, but that approach doesn't work for me with an off-screen scene.

I tried rendering into the context of an GLKView using SCNRenderer without success.

Answer 1

Swift 4 with SCNRenderer:

You can use SCNRenderer's snapshot method to render the off-screen SCNScene to a UIImage pretty easily.

Some caveats here, this uses Metal. I don't know where the device/iOS version cutoff is, but you'll need a newer device. You also won't be able to run it on the simulator.

Step 1 - Set up your scene like you normally would:

// Set up your scene which won't be displayed
let hiddenScene = SCNScene()
[insert code to set up your nodes, cameras, and lights here]

Step 2 - Set up the SCNRenderer -- renderer will be nil on simulator:

// Set up the renderer -- this returns nil on simulator
let renderer = SCNRenderer(device: MTLCreateSystemDefaultDevice(), options: nil)
renderer!.scene = hiddenScene

Step 3 - Render scene to UIImage:

// You can use zero for renderTime unless you are using animations,
// in which case, renderTime should be the current scene time.
let renderTime = TimeInterval(0)

// Output size
let size = CGSize(width:300, height: 150)

// Render the image
let image = renderer!.snapshot(atTime: renderTime, with: size,
                antialiasingMode: SCNAntialiasingMode.multisampling4X)

If you are running animations, you'll need to increment renderTime or set it to the time index you want to render. For example, if you want to render the frame 4 seconds into the scene, you would set it to 4. This only affects animations -- it won't go back in time and show you a historical view of your scene.

For example, if you run are running animations with SCNNode.runAction, you may want to keep incrementing renderTime every 60th of a second (0.16667 seconds), so that whenever you decide to render, you've got an updated renderTime:

var timer : Timer
var renderTime = TimeInterval(0)

timer = Timer.scheduledTimer(withTimeInterval: 0.016667, repeats: true, block: { (t) in 
        self?.renderTime += 0.016667
    }   
})

Using CADisplayLink is probably a better solution for the timing though.

Here's a very quick and dirty implementation example.

Answer 2

Here’s a little code I wrote. You can use it note for note.

public extension SCNRenderer {

    public func renderToImageSize(size: CGSize, floatComponents: Bool, atTime time: NSTimeInterval) -> CGImage? {

        var thumbnailCGImage: CGImage?

        let width = GLsizei(size.width), height = GLsizei(size.height)
        let samplesPerPixel = 4

        #if os(iOS)
            let oldGLContext = EAGLContext.currentContext()
            let glContext = unsafeBitCast(context, EAGLContext.self)

            EAGLContext.setCurrentContext(glContext)
            objc_sync_enter(glContext)
        #elseif os(OSX)
            let oldGLContext = CGLGetCurrentContext()
            let glContext = unsafeBitCast(context, CGLContextObj.self)

            CGLSetCurrentContext(glContext)
            CGLLockContext(glContext)
        #endif

        // set up the OpenGL buffers
        var thumbnailFramebuffer: GLuint = 0
        glGenFramebuffers(1, &thumbnailFramebuffer)
        glBindFramebuffer(GLenum(GL_FRAMEBUFFER), thumbnailFramebuffer); checkGLErrors()

        var colorRenderbuffer: GLuint = 0
        glGenRenderbuffers(1, &colorRenderbuffer)
        glBindRenderbuffer(GLenum(GL_RENDERBUFFER), colorRenderbuffer)
        if floatComponents {
            glRenderbufferStorage(GLenum(GL_RENDERBUFFER), GLenum(GL_RGBA16F), width, height)
        } else {
            glRenderbufferStorage(GLenum(GL_RENDERBUFFER), GLenum(GL_RGBA8), width, height)
        }
        glFramebufferRenderbuffer(GLenum(GL_FRAMEBUFFER), GLenum(GL_COLOR_ATTACHMENT0), GLenum(GL_RENDERBUFFER), colorRenderbuffer); checkGLErrors()

        var depthRenderbuffer: GLuint = 0
        glGenRenderbuffers(1, &depthRenderbuffer)
        glBindRenderbuffer(GLenum(GL_RENDERBUFFER), depthRenderbuffer)
        glRenderbufferStorage(GLenum(GL_RENDERBUFFER), GLenum(GL_DEPTH_COMPONENT24), width, height)
        glFramebufferRenderbuffer(GLenum(GL_FRAMEBUFFER), GLenum(GL_DEPTH_ATTACHMENT), GLenum(GL_RENDERBUFFER), depthRenderbuffer); checkGLErrors()

        let framebufferStatus = Int32(glCheckFramebufferStatus(GLenum(GL_FRAMEBUFFER)))
        assert(framebufferStatus == GL_FRAMEBUFFER_COMPLETE)
        if framebufferStatus != GL_FRAMEBUFFER_COMPLETE {
            return nil
        }

        // clear buffer
        glViewport(0, 0, width, height)
        glClear(GLbitfield(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT)); checkGLErrors()

        // render
        renderAtTime(time); checkGLErrors()

        // create the image
        if floatComponents { // float components (16-bits of actual precision)

            // slurp bytes out of OpenGL
            typealias ComponentType = Float

            var imageRawBuffer = [ComponentType](count: Int(width * height) * samplesPerPixel * sizeof(ComponentType), repeatedValue: 0)
            glReadPixels(GLint(0), GLint(0), width, height, GLenum(GL_RGBA), GLenum(GL_FLOAT), &imageRawBuffer)

            // flip image vertically — OpenGL has a different 'up' than CoreGraphics
            let rowLength = Int(width) * samplesPerPixel
            for rowIndex in 0..<(Int(height) / 2) {
                let baseIndex = rowIndex * rowLength
                let destinationIndex = (Int(height) - 1 - rowIndex) * rowLength

                swap(&imageRawBuffer[baseIndex..<(baseIndex + rowLength)], &imageRawBuffer[destinationIndex..<(destinationIndex + rowLength)])
            }

            // make the CGImage
            var imageBuffer = vImage_Buffer(
                data: UnsafeMutablePointer<Float>(imageRawBuffer),
                height: vImagePixelCount(height),
                width: vImagePixelCount(width),
                rowBytes: Int(width) * sizeof(ComponentType) * samplesPerPixel)

            var format = vImage_CGImageFormat(
                bitsPerComponent: UInt32(sizeof(ComponentType) * 8),
                bitsPerPixel: UInt32(sizeof(ComponentType) * samplesPerPixel * 8),
                colorSpace: nil, // defaults to sRGB
                bitmapInfo: CGBitmapInfo(CGImageAlphaInfo.PremultipliedLast.rawValue | CGBitmapInfo.ByteOrder32Little.rawValue | CGBitmapInfo.FloatComponents.rawValue),
                version: UInt32(0),
                decode: nil,
                renderingIntent: kCGRenderingIntentDefault)

            var error: vImage_Error = 0
            thumbnailCGImage = vImageCreateCGImageFromBuffer(&imageBuffer, &format, nil, nil, vImage_Flags(kvImagePrintDiagnosticsToConsole), &error)!.takeRetainedValue()

        } else { // byte components

            // slurp bytes out of OpenGL
            typealias ComponentType = UInt8

            var imageRawBuffer = [ComponentType](count: Int(width * height) * samplesPerPixel * sizeof(ComponentType), repeatedValue: 0)
            glReadPixels(GLint(0), GLint(0), width, height, GLenum(GL_RGBA), GLenum(GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE), &imageRawBuffer)

            // flip image vertically — OpenGL has a different 'up' than CoreGraphics
            let rowLength = Int(width) * samplesPerPixel
            for rowIndex in 0..<(Int(height) / 2) {
                let baseIndex = rowIndex * rowLength
                let destinationIndex = (Int(height) - 1 - rowIndex) * rowLength

                swap(&imageRawBuffer[baseIndex..<(baseIndex + rowLength)], &imageRawBuffer[destinationIndex..<(destinationIndex + rowLength)])
            }

            // make the CGImage
            var imageBuffer = vImage_Buffer(
                data: UnsafeMutablePointer<Float>(imageRawBuffer),
                height: vImagePixelCount(height),
                width: vImagePixelCount(width),
                rowBytes: Int(width) * sizeof(ComponentType) * samplesPerPixel)

            var format = vImage_CGImageFormat(
                bitsPerComponent: UInt32(sizeof(ComponentType) * 8),
                bitsPerPixel: UInt32(sizeof(ComponentType) * samplesPerPixel * 8),
                colorSpace: nil, // defaults to sRGB
                bitmapInfo: CGBitmapInfo(CGImageAlphaInfo.PremultipliedLast.rawValue | CGBitmapInfo.ByteOrder32Big.rawValue),
                version: UInt32(0),
                decode: nil,
                renderingIntent: kCGRenderingIntentDefault)

            var error: vImage_Error = 0
            thumbnailCGImage = vImageCreateCGImageFromBuffer(&imageBuffer, &format, nil, nil, vImage_Flags(kvImagePrintDiagnosticsToConsole), &error)!.takeRetainedValue()
        }

        #if os(iOS)
            objc_sync_exit(glContext)
            if oldGLContext != nil {
                EAGLContext.setCurrentContext(oldGLContext)
            }
        #elseif os(OSX)
            CGLUnlockContext(glContext)
            if oldGLContext != nil {
                CGLSetCurrentContext(oldGLContext)
            }
        #endif

        return thumbnailCGImage
    }
}


func checkGLErrors() {
    var glError: GLenum
    var hadError = false
    do {
        glError = glGetError()
        if glError != 0 {
            println(String(format: "OpenGL error %#x", glError))
            hadError = true
        }
    } while glError != 0
    assert(!hadError)
}