User Guide

180 CHAPTER 13
• For Surface Objects precomputed lighting is stored at the vertices of the mesh. To increase the lighting quality,
subdivide the mesh prior to importing it into Atmosphere.
Tutorial: Preparing Textures for Lighting
While you can use Atmosphere’s Brightness setting to adjust texture objects, better results are possible with a little
forethought as textures are being prepared. To prepare textures for lighting in Atmosphere, follow these steps.
1 Open and crop the texture that you wish to use in Photoshop.
2 If the texture lighting is uneven, click the Create a New Layer button in the Layers palette and change its name to
“Color.” Then click on the bottom layer “Background” to select it.
3 Select the Filter > Other > High Pass menu command and set the Radius value of 100.
4 Select the Flatten Image command in the Layers palette menu.
5 Select the Image > Adjustment > Levels command (Ctrl+L) and drag the slider to brighten the image while
maintaining contrast.
6 Save a copy of the texture. It’s wise to save an original copy in case you need to make further adjustments..
Above is a texture before brightening with this technique, and the same texture after the levels have been changed. Texture
images are pre-lit and become darker when applied to a lighted scene. Brightening dark textures causes them to appear
correctly in a lighted scene. Below are two cubes with identical lighting with the two different textures applied.