Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
•
The
Enable VIPER
check box (see
Figure 4-6) stores information about your
render to be used later with LightWave's
Versatile Interactive Preview Render. We
get into VIPER later on in this chapter, but
in a nutshell, it is a way for you to get
real-time updates of your render when you
make changes to surfaces or volumetrics.
•
Render Mode
is a pop-up menu that
lets you choose what kind of rendering
style your image will use. Realistic is the
render mode you will use most often
because it looks, well, most realistic. Quick-
shade gives you something that looks like a
smooth-shaded GL view
that obeys Anti-
aliasing, Motion Blur, and Depth of Field
settings
! Wireframe renders your image as a
wireframe and, like Quickshade, it obeys
what you have set for Antialiasing, Motion
Blur, and Depth of Field.
ray-traced scene takes to render if there are
a lot of objects casting shadows, reflecting
other parts of the scene, or bending light. If
there
isn't
a lot of this going on in a scene,
the time up-front it takes LightWave to do
this extra optimization may
make the render
take longer
! (The only way to know for sure
is to render a test frame with this setting
active. Compare how long it takes for the
same frame to render without it active.
Then proceed with your final render with
the setting that gets the job done quickest.)
•
Ray Recursion Limit
tells LightWave
how many times you want light to be able
to bounce off of reflective surfaces before
LightWave stops keeping track of what that
ray of light is doing. I like to keep this num-
ber low (like 1 or 2) unless I'm specifically
going for that “hall of mirrors” kind of
effect.
•
Multithreading
is a pop-up menu that
allows LightWave's renderer to make use of
multiple processors present in a single
computer. (This can speed up a render, but
some of the more complex or older plug-ins
do not work well under multithreading.)
Note
Because Quickshade quickly renders your
scene
and
shows you what your Motion Blur
and Depth of Field settings will look like, it is
a great way to preview those complex, and
sometimes confusing, time-intensive camera
settings!
When rendering in Realistic render mode,
you are given the options to have Light-
Wave precisely calculate how light casts
shadows (Ray Trace Shadows), reflects
from polished surfaces (Ray Trace Reflec-
tion), and is bent through transparent
surfaces (Ray Trace Refraction). You can
also allow volumetrics to be seen through
all transparent surfaces (Ray Trace
Transparency).
•
Extra Ray Trace Optimization
asks
LightWave to take a bit more time before it
actually begins to render a scene to figure
out just what is affecting the rays of light.
This can significantly
reduce
the time a
Figure 4-9: Using the Data Overlay and Label
options.
•
Data Overlay
puts a “burn-in” on
your final image of the contents in the
Label
box and the time format you select in
the pop-up menu.
