Environments, ambient occlusion, and rendering

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Welcome to VRED.

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The default environment in VRED is a Studio.

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It contains a Dome that the environment is applied to and a shadow plane.

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You can apply your own images to the environment.

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However, for now, we will use one of the example environments in the Asset Manager,

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Select the Environment tab, then the Autodesk VRED Assets folder to display a list of environments.

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Scroll down and left mouse button drag Pacific Rd. onto the environment Dome to apply it.

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You can add multiple environments and switch between them by clicking on these boxes to toggle their visibility.

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Next, we'll calculate ambient occlusion.

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Ambient occlusion is proximity-based shadows.

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Calculating it creates shadows in the gaps of your model and greatly improves the realism of your rendering.

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So select the visualization menu and click on Ambient Occlusion Rendering.

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You can see that there are no shadows on the model.

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So let's calculate ambient occlusion and see the difference.

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Go back to the Scenegraph and select the top node of the car.

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Select Scene, Bake Light and Shadows, and in the Direct illumination section, click Ambient Occlusion.

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Use the default settings and click Calculate All.

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Depending on your computer's capabilities, this is likely to take several minutes.

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Now you can see what's added with the Ambient occlusion.

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In the visualization menu, select Realistic Rendering.

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You may not have noticed, but the car is slightly below the ground of the environment.

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With the top node of the car still selected, click on Transform in the toolbar.

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This translate manipulator should be displayed.

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If a different manipulator is shown, click and hold the arrow and select Transform Manipulator.

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Hold the shift key and left mouse button drag the arrow until the bottom of the tires is just above the environment.

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Deselect Transform and Shift + right mouse button Click to deselect the model.

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Now let's prepare for the final task of rendering.

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Deselect Headlights from the toolbar if it was selected.

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This is a default light that won't be needed now.

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Position the model for rendering.

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Select Antialias from the toolbar.

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Ray Tracing calculates reflections, refractions, and light-based shadows.

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Antialias smooths edges and improves the model's appearance.

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Select Render from the icon bar.

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In the file output Render Settings tab, change image size presets to HD1080.

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In the General Settings tab, set Adaptive Sampling to Ultra High Quality for production-level rendering.

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Click Render to name the image and specify the location.

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Then click Save.

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The render may take several minutes.

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Navigate to the image and view your render.

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And finally, go to File < Save As and Save your work.

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The native format for VRED is .vpb.