2008

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 7710 .
■ Use atmospheric plug-ins, such as volumetric light, in the scene.
■ Apply exposure controls to renderings.
Atmospheres
Atmospheres are
plug-in on page 7896 components that create lighting effects
such as fog, fire, and so on.
Fire Environment Effect on page 6493
Fog Environment Effect on page 6506
Volume Fog Environment Effect on page 6512
Volume Light Environment Effect on page 6520
See
Environment dialog on page 6486 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 6531 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 6534
■ Logarithmic Exposure Control on page 6540
■ Linear Exposure Control on page 6537
■ mr Photographic Exposure Control on page 6544
Environment and Atmosphere Effects | 6485