Chapter 42 Using Atmospheric Effects 1015

Using the Volume Light effect

The final choice in the Effects dialog box is the Volume Light effect. This effect shares many of the same parameters as the other atmospheric effects. Although this is one of the atmospheric effects, it deals with lights and fits better in that section.

Cross- To learn about the Volume Light atmospheric effect, see Chapter 27, “Basic Lighting Reference Techniques.”

Summary

Creating the right environment can add lots of realism to any rendered scene. Using the Environment and Effects dialog box, you can work with atmospheric effects. Atmospheric effects include Fire, Fog, Volume Fog, and Volume Light.

In this chapter, you

Created Atmospheric Apparatus gizmos for positioning atmospheric effects

Worked with the Fire atmospheric effects

Created fog and volume fog effects

Now that we’ve whetted your appetite for effects, you’ll be pleased to know that the next chapter covers Render Effects, which are effects that added to the scene at render time, along with Render Elements.

Using Render

Elements and

Effects

You can set Max to render any part in the rendering pipeline individually. These settings are called render elements. By rendering out just the Specular layer or just the shadow, you have more control

over these elements in your compositor.

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 would normally be spent rendering an image, touching it up, and repeating the process again and again.

This chapter presents both render elements and the various render effects and shows you how to use them.

Using Render Elements

If your production group includes a strong post-processing team that does compositing, then there may be times when you just want to render certain elements of the scene, such as the alpha information or a specific atmospheric effect. Applying individual elements to a composite image gives you better control over the elements. For example, you could reposition or lighten a shadow without having to re-render the entire scene.

Using the Render Elements rollout of the Render Scene dialog box, shown in Figure 43-1, you can render a single effect and save it as an image.

43C H A P T E R

In This Chapter

Using render elements

Adding render effects

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

Understanding the other various types of render effects

1018 Part X Rendering

Figure 43-1: You can use the Render Elements rollout to render specific effects.

You can select and render several render elements at the same time. The available render elements include Alpha, Atmosphere, Background, Blend, Diffuse, Ink, Lighting, Matte, Paint, Reflection, Refraction, Self-Illumination, Shadow, Specular, and Z Depth.

New	The Lighting and Matte render elements are new to 3ds max 6.
Feature

The Render Elements rollout can render several elements at once. The Add button opens the Render Elements dialog box, where you can select the elements to include. The Merge button lets you merge the elements from another Max scene, and the Delete button lets you delete elements from the list. To be included in the rendered image, the Elements Active option must be checked. The Display Elements option causes the results to be rendered separately and displayed in the Rendered Frame Window.

The Enable check box can turn off individual elements; Enable Filtering enables the antialiasing filtering as specified in the Max Default Scanline A-Buffer rollout. A separate Rendered Frame Window window is opened for each render element that is enabled.