3ds Max® 2012 Bible

CHAPTER 46

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. You can access the Environment panel from the Rendering Environment menu command or by pressing the ...