2012

Table Of Contents
Editing parameters in the dialog box will interactively alter the scene with
those changes.
At any time, click Apply to apply the parameter edits to the light in the scene.
You can save an edited light for use in other scenes by dragging it onto the
My Lighting user archive.
Shadow Casting
Selecting the Shadows check box in the Light Editor of a light that supports
shadows (point, distant, spot, sky, sun, projector and goniometric) results in
the selected light casting shadows in the scene. Shadows will only be visible
in photorealistic renders, unless you are using a Hardware accelerated OpenGL
1.5 compliant graphics card, in which case, you can preview interactive shadows.
See Presenter Page for details on how to display interactive shadows and
lighting.
NOTE Enabling shadows on lights should be given due consideration. If you turn
on shadows on all lights, then you may find the effect very confusing and somewhat
unnatural, especially if there are many lights in a small scene. This will also affect
performance, during navigation and general refreshing of the Scene View. You
may want to consider only enabling shadows on a few strategically positioned
lights, to create the effect you require.
In addition to choosing which lights in your model will cast shadows, you
may also select which geometry items in the model should cast a shadow. Each
item in the scene has its own shadow casting option.
To set shadow casting from the Scene View
Right-click an item in the Scene View, click Presenter on the shortcut
menu, click Shadows, and click the shadow casting option you require.
The available shadow casting options available for a geometry item are:
On. Choose this to enable shadows. The selected item will cast a shadow
from any light source that has Shadows enabled.
Off. Choose this to disable shadows. The selected item will not cast a
shadow from any light source.
Inherit. Choose this to inherit the shadow casting option from the
parent item. That is, the selected item will use the same option as the
item directly above it in the Selection Tree path (see
Selection Tree
Window
(page 338) for more information). For example, if you turn
572 | Chapter 13 Create Photorealistic Visualizations