3ds Max® 2008 Bible

Chapter 45. Using Atmospheric and Render Effects

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Using Exposure Controls

• Using Atmospheric Apparatus gizmos to position atmospheric effects

• Using the Fire effect

• Working with fog

• Adding render effects

• Using the Lens Effects to add glows, rays, and streaks

• Understanding the other types of render effects

In the real world, an environment of some kind surrounds all objects. The environment does much to set the ambiance of the scene. For example, an animation set at night in the woods has a very different environment than one set at the horse races during the middle of the day. Max includes dialog boxes for setting the color, background images, and lighting environment; these features can help define your scene.

This chapter covers exposure controls, atmospheric effects, including the likes of clouds, fog, and fire. These effects can be seen only when the scene is rendered.

Max also has a class of effects that you can interactively render to the Rendered Frame window without using any post-production features such as the Video Post dialog box. These effects are called render effects. Render effects can save you lots of time that you would normally spend rendering an image, touching it up, and repeating the process again and again.

Using Exposure Controls

The Exposure Control rollout of the Environment panel lets you control output levels and color rendering ranges. Controlling the exposure of film is a common procedure when working with film and can result in a different look for ...