Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
second default light to help increase the lighting level, and to balance the lighting in a
viewport.
Default lighting can't cast shadows, so I don't recommend using it for final renderings. It
does
work pretty well for quick conceptual renderings, however. You can control the
brightness, contrast, and midtones levels for default lighting with the slider controls on
the slideout of the Lights panel on the Render tab of Ribbon (see Figure 23-2).
Figure 23-2:
AutoCAD to lights, extra brightness is a go.
The DEFAULTLIGHTING system variable is used to enable and disable the use
of default lighting in the current viewport. Set DEFAULTLIGHTING to 0 when you
want user-defined lighting to render your 3D model. If you are using default light-
ing, the DEFAULTLIGHTINGTYPE system variable controls whether one or two de-
fault distant lights are used. When set to 0, one default light is used; when set to 1,
two default lights are used.
User-defined lights
Default lights are fine for quick renderings, but they don't bring your renderings to life in
the way that user-defined lights can. User-defined lights are lights that you create —
with one exception — and modify in your 3D model. The only user-definable light type
that you can enable and modify, but can't create, is the sunlight system.
The first time that a user-defined light is placed in a drawing, the Lighting - Viewport
Lighting Mode alert box is displayed, advising you that you need to turn off default light-
