Autodesk 12812-051462-9011 User Guide 3 - Page 1433

You can use the environment functions to: ■ Set and animate the background color. ■ Use an image in the background of the rendered scene (screen environment) or use texture maps as spherical, cylindrical, or shrink-wrap environments. ■ Set and animate the ambient light on page 7906. ■ Use atmospheric plug-ins, such as volumetric light, in the scene. ■ Apply exposure controls to renderings. Atmospheres Atmospheres are plug-in on page 8092 components that create lighting effects such as fog, fire, and so on. Fire Environment Effect on page 6696 Fog Environment Effect on page 6707 Volume Fog Environment Effect on page 6713 Volume Light Environment Effect on page 6721 See Environment dialog on page 6689 for all environment parameters. Exposure Controls One of the limitations of rendering perceptually accurate images is the limited dynamic range of computer monitors. Dynamic range is the ratio of the highest to lowest intensity a monitor can produce. In a dark room this ratio is approximately 100 to 1. In a bright room, this drops to approximately 30 to 1. Real environments can have dynamic ranges of 10,000 to 1, or larger. Exposure Controls on page 6732 map light-energy values to colors in a process known as tone mapping. They affect the brightness and contrast of both rendered images and viewport displays. They don't affect the actual lighting levels in the scene, but only how those levels are mapped to a valid display range. ■ Automatic Exposure Control on page 6735 ■ Logarithmic Exposure Control on page 6740 ■ Linear Exposure Control on page 6738 ■ mr Photographic Exposure Control on page 6744 6688 | Chapter 21 Effects and Environments