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272 Chapter 18: Effects and Environments
approximately 100 to 1. In a bright room, this
drops to approximately 30 to 1. Real en vironmen ts
can have dy namic ranges of 10,000 to 1, or larger.
Exposure Controls (page 3–293) map light energy
values to colors. They affect the brightness and
contrast of both rendered images and v iewport
displays. They don’t affect the actua l lighting levels
in the scene, but only how those lev els are mapped
to a valid display range.
• Automatic Exposure Control (page 3–295)
• Logarithmic Exposure Control (page 3–297)
• Linear Exposure Control (page 3–296)
• Pseudo Color Exposure Control (page 3–300)
Env ironment Pa nel
Rendering menu > Environment > Environment and
Effects dialog > Environment panel
Use the Environment panel to:
• Setandanimatethebackgroundcolor.
• Use an image in the background of the viewport
and rendered scene (screen environment) or
use texture maps as spherica l, cylindrical, or
shrink-wrap environments.
•Setandanimatethetintandambient light (page
3–908) globally.
• Use atmospheric plug-ins, such as volumetric
light, in the scene.
A tmospheres are plug-in components (page
3–995) that create lig ht effects such as fire (page
3–276), fog (page 3–282), volume fog (page
3–284),andvolume light (page 3–288).
•Applyexposure controls (page 3–293) to
renderings.
See also
Exposure Controls (page 3–293)
Procedures
To access environment f unctions, do one of the
following:
•ChooseRendering>Environment.
• On the Environment and Effects dialog, click
the Environment tab.
To set the back ground color :
1.
Choose Rendering > Environment.
The Environment panel appears.
2. In the Background group, click the color
swatch.
A Color Selector (page 1–161) appears.
3. Use t he Color Selector to change the
background color.
TheRenderernowusesthiscolorasa
background.
To choose a n envir onment map:
1.
Display the Material Ed itor.
You adjust the map’s parameters with the
Material Editor.
2. Choose Rendering > Environment.
3. Under Background on the Environment panel,
do one of the following:
•ClicktheEnvironmentMapbutton.The
Material/Map Browser appears. Choose a
map type from t he list.
•DragamaptotheEnvironmentMapbutton.
Youcandothisfromamapdisplayedinone
oftheMaterialEditor’ssampleslots,orfrom
any map button that has been assig ned,
either in the Material Editor or from a
projection light, and so on.
Drag a bitmap from the Material Editor’s
map preview to the Environment Map
button.