Rendering Page

Radiosity Options

Quality Level. The level of quality in the resulting ray traced animation. There are 5 levels to choose from. Note that the higher level of quality you choose, the longer the ray tracing process takes.

Change display every _ steps. As the program performs lighting calculations, the view updates at regular intervals to reflect calculations up to that point. This is the number of steps between visual updates.

Image Brightness. Specifying a value manually overrides the automatic exposure of the virtual camera. The program's "virtual camera" works in a manner similar to actual point-and-shoot cameras. It automatically calculates the correct "exposure" for the lighting situation and produces a view with infinite depth of field (i.e. everything is in focus).

Enable Daylight. If disabled, omits daylight from the lighting calculations, and can speed up rendering. Daylight is included in lighting calculations, even for indoor scenes (light can come through a window). This option should always remain on for exterior shots, even if it is a night shot.

Raytracing Options

Antialiasing. Blends pixels in areas where two colors or two materials meet to reduce artifacts (or “stair steps”) and produce a more natural look to the scene.

Raytrace Automatically after Radiosity. This option must always remain on if you want to ray trace your animation.

Effects

Enable. Allows you to create either a fog or smoke effect in the animation.

Fog. Creates a fog effect.

Smoke. Creates a smoke effect.

Density. The thickness of the fog or smoke.

Image Output

The options in this area are grayed out because the output file information is specified in your Animation Properties.

Global Settings Page

Global settings help determine how much daylight is available in the scene.

Country and City. Selecting a country and city determines the location of your house in the world.

Add City. Lets you add a new city to the list. To define a city, you specify its longitude, latitude and time zone.

Edit City. Lets you edit the name, longitude, latitude or time zone of a city.

Delete City. Deletes a city from the list of cities.

Load. Imports cities into the list of cities from a saved city template.

Save. Saves the current list of cities to a template file. The file can then be loaded into any project.

Date. To select a month, use the arrows to the left and right of the current month name on the calendar. To select the day of the month, click the appropriate number on the calendar.

Time. Use the slider to move the time of day forwards or backwards, or enter a time in the edit box. Select either am or pm.

Daylight Saving. If enabled, the program keeps track of changes in time due to daylight savings.

Set Current Time. Reads the current time set in your computer system and defaults to the next smallest 5-minute increment of time. For example, 12:04 becomes 12:00.

Angle from True North. Determines where North is on your screen, and affects the angle of the sun for daylight rendering. The number in degrees that you enter is in relation to the 90° perpendicular orientation of your drawing. A value of 1º makes the top of the screen North. A value of 90º makes the top of the screen East, and the left side of the screen North.