DriveWorks Pro 20

Environment Settings

Environment Settings

Environment settings allow you to control DriveWorks 3D Document properties that affect the whole scene. Settings can affect the lighting, model reflections, background colors and more.

Information Panel

With Environment selected in the Feature Panel the following will be displayed in the Information Panel:

General

• Use environment map

  Checking this allows Use Environment Map Lighting and Display Sky Box to be set.

  In the Environment Map section of the Information Panel, you can adjust the parameters: Exposure, Rotation and Maximum Brightness.

  Checking Use environment map will allow the environment map to be used in model reflections. High reflectivity models will reflect the sky box in the model.

  No Environment Map	With Environment Map

• Use environment map lighting

  Will use the lighting from the Environment Map images. Light areas in the images will appear as light areas on the model.

• Display sky box

  Will display the sky scene around the model.

• Display Default Camera

  Will display the Document's Default Camera. Used to hide the Default Camera when Camera Entities are being used in a Document.

Environment Map

The following settings can be applied to the Environment Map:

• Exposure

  This is essentially brightness for the Environment Map.

  Exposure is slightly different to brightness, in that it’s applied on a curve so bright parts get brighter faster than dark parts.

  Typical values vary depending on how bright the scene is required to be and the image used.

  For JPG/PNG images, optimal values will be between 0.5 and 3.

  HDRI images can be extremely bright so lower values would be more realistic, possibly 0.1 or so.

• Rotation

  This rotates the Environment Map in degrees.

  Its main use is when the Environment Map is displayed as a skybox.

  Typical values are between 0-360 degrees.

• Maximum Brightness

  This limits the maximum brightness (typically applied to extremely bright HDRI images, that capture the sun for example) which can play havoc with reflections and bloom post effects. This can also happen if there is a really high exposure setting in the image.

  Typical values, can be left at 100 unless the image has bright spots, in which case reduce this value.

Background Color

Sets the color to use for the background (not applicable when using sky box).

Will apply a hexadecimal value to the Background Color in the Parameter Panel.

• Red - a number from 0 to 255
• Green - a number from 0 to 255
• Blue - a number from 0 to 255
• Alpha - (Transparency) a number from 0 to 255

Ambient Light Color

• Red - a number from 0 to 1
• Green - a number from 0 to 1
• Blue - a number from 0 to 1
• Intensity - a number from -x to +x

Color Adjustments

• Tone Mapping Strength

  This adjusts the maximum value for the tone mapping.

  Tone mapping puts color brightness on a curve, so there is more room to calculate colors in the renderer, then bring them back into a range displayable on a monitor. This allows a much greater range in light brightness levels but reduces contrast.

  A value of 0 keeps colors the same, a maximum of 1 gives a cap of 5 on the curve.

  Typically this can be set at 1.

  

  The image above shows the curve where (in the renderer) brightness is on the bottom, to the final displayed brightness on the left (1 is the maximum a monitor can display).

  The blue line is the maximum tone mapping of 1. The red line is the minimum tone mapping of 0.

  The curve is x / ( x + 0.187) * 1.035

  Where x is the tone mapping value.

• Brightness

  Brightness is a literal brightness multiplier.

  Typical values are between 0.5 and 2.0.

• Contrast

  Contrast shifts colors away from the mid range. So it makes dark colors darker and bright colors brighter.

  Range of the slider is -1 to 1. Where -1 will be no contrast and will make the entire scene mid-gray. 0 is no change and 1 will significantly increase the contrast.

Camera Effects

See Camera Effects for more information.

• Ambient Occlusion - see Ambient Occlusion for more information about the settings below:
  • Ambient Occlusion (Enabled)
  • Exponent
  • Falloff Depth
  • Radius
  • Intensity
  • Downsampling
  • Blur Passes
• Bloom - see Bloom for more information about the settings below:
  • Bloom (Enabled)
  • Radius
  • Intensity
  • Threshold
  • Downsampling
  • Blur Passes
• Vignette - see Vignette for more information about the settings below:
  • Vignette (Enabled)
  • Intensity
  • Exponent
  • Shape
  • Inner Area Size
  • Color:
    • Red - a number from 0 to 255
    • Green - a number from 0 to 255
    • Blue - a number from 0 to 255
    • Alpha - (Transparency) a number from 0 to 255
• Depth of Field - see Depth of Field for more information about the settings below:
  • Depth of Field (Enabled)
  • Focus Target
  • Focus Distance
  • Focus Size
  • Near Falloff
  • Far Falloff
  • Blur Radius
  • Downsampling
  • Blur Passes
• Screen Space Reflections- see Screen Space Reflections for more information about the settings below:
  • Screen Space Reflections (Enabled)
  • Quality (dropdown menu): Custom, Low, Medium, High
  • Resolution
  • Refinement
  • Intensity
  • Thickness
  • Falloff Sharpness
  • Scatter
  • Blur Intensity
  • Blur Passes
• Edge Sketch - see Edge Sketch for more information on the settings available.
• Outline Glow - see Outline Glow for more information on the settings available.

Parameter Panel

With Environment checked in the Feature Panel the following will be displayed in the Parameters Panel:

• Environment Map

  Adjust Exposure, Rotation and Maximum Brightness

• Ambient Light Red

  A number from 0 to 1

• Ambient Light Green

  A number from 0 to 1

• Ambient Light Blue

  A number from 0 to 1

• Ambient Light Intensity

  A number from -X to +X

• Background Color

  Sets the color to use for the background (not applicable when using sky box). Requires a hexadecimal value.

• Use environment map lighting

  True use the default lighting applied to the environment.

• Use environment map

  True to allow Map Lighting and Sky Box values to be honored.

• Display Skybox

  True to display the sky scene around the model.

• Display Default Camera

  True to display the Document's Default Camera. False to hide it.