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Render Tips 1: Viewpoints and Light Sources

Render Tips is a series of recommendations to achieve great images in Artlantis, we hope you will become a master of render with these!

Artlantis R and Studio have the advantage to be able to generate multiple view points as perspective views, parallel views, VR, VR Object and Animations with different light settings, in other words, the user can have combinations of light sources for each individual viewpoint.There are three groups of light sources: first, Heliodon which emulates the sunlight, second, Light, as of artificial lights, and last Neon light. The combination of these sources allows the user to make his own combinations for each view. The Neon light source is classified as a Shader therefore it is applied to all viewpoints and cannot be switched off without doing so on all views.

We use the following example contained on Room Basic.atl , to show how light sources are assigned independently to each view. To generate your own views just click the + sign on the views list and assign your own light sources. In the following example we use the three groups of light sources. Since the Neon light was previously assigned to the glass window and the ceiling lamps, and as mentioned these settings are not view-dependent, the Neon-effect will be available on all views.

On the first view called Only Neon, we only use Neon light source for the lamps, and the Glass Neon from the Shaders Catalog.For this view both Heliodon and Lights are set to NONE. The background color is also set for each view, in the first example the sky is dark blue.

If you perform a final render with the default settings, you will get this image result.

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On the second view called Natural Light + Neon we combine the Neon source with Heliodon light to this view and a different sky color was assigned.

On the third view called Neon+Night Heliodon+ Spot, two different light sources are applied to the perspective, Heliodon Night and Spot.

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For each view Radiosity can be turned on and off, obviously it is most desirable to activate radiosity for Artlantis to achieve the best results. This ON-switch for radiosity is view-dependent and depending on the number of light bounces it performs, ranging from 0 to 200, it affects general lighting. In this example, 150 bounces are set for all views to achieve good overall illumination.

When working on a view, it is important to click the Radiosity button to see fast radiosity results for that view, thus improving the results of the final render. Whenever you push the Radiosity button, you will see a four-step process (default) to calculate the radiosity result.

Once the four-step fast radiosity process is over, you will see an approximate quality of the final render light distribution. The higher the number of the bounces is, the longer the render will take, so try to find a balance between your computer´s capacity and your desired results. For calculating radiosity fast, it is vital to foresee the final result without doing any test-render. Alternatively, you can use the Render Zone tool to generate a preliminary render of an specific area to preview the final result, the quality of the render is only preliminary, but should give you an idea and a closer image of the final result:

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Each view has its own settings for the final render, but be aware that while Artlantis is especially fast on computing radiosity, the render time for the final render can take much longer than necessary. Therefore, if you are making test-renders, make sure to activate Ati-aliasing at the low quality, and the same goes for radiosity, ray tracing and transparency: these all should be set low for preliminary renders. A render with the highest setting will surely provide you with the finest render you can achieve in Artlantis, but if your light and shader-selections are not good, the final render with the highest quality will not fix a bad choice: if your render looks bad with lower settings, it will not improve much after changing it to the highest settings.

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Image with higher render settings:

Good luck! Hoping these tips will help you in getting better render results!Author: Sergio Rodriguez