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Chapter 23: Rendering a Scene and Enabling Quicksilver

FIGURE 23.14
The Environment and Effects dialog box lets you select a background color or image, define global lighting, control
exposure, and work with atmospheric effects.

Tip
If the environment map that you want to use is already displayed in one of the Material Editor sample slots, you
can drag it directly from the Material Editor and drop it on the Map button in the Environment panel. n
To change any of the environment map parameters (such as the mapping coordinates), you need to load the
environment map into the Material Editor. You can do so by dragging the map button from the Environment
panel onto one of the sample slots in the Material Editor. After releasing the material, the Instance (Copy)
Map dialog box asks whether you want to create an Instance or a Copy. If you select Instance, any parameter
changes that you make to the material automatically update the map in the Environment panel.
Once in the Material Editor, you can use the Environment Map to create a Spherical Environment map that
is used to reflect off objects in the scene.
Cross-Ref
For more information about the types of available mapping parameters, see Chapter 17, “Adding Material Details
with Maps.” n
The background image doesn’t need to be an image: You can also load animations. Supported formats
include AVI, MPEG, MOV, and IFL files.
Figure 23.15 shows a scene with an image of the Golden Gate Bridge loaded as the environment map.
Viewpoint Datalabs created the airplane model.

Setting global lighting
The Tint color swatch in the Global Lighting section of the Environment panel specifies a color used to tint
all lights. The Level value increases or decreases the overall lighting level for all lights in the scene. The
Ambient color swatch sets the color for the ambient light in the scene, which is the darkest color that any
shadows in the scene can be. You can animate all these settings.

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