Setting Light Parameters - Adobe ATMOSPHERE User Manual

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CHAPTER 13

Setting Light Parameters

All of the controls for scene lighting are in the Lighting Control palette. This palette includes four separate tabbed
panes – Controls, Settings, Quality, and Sun.
Creating Light Maps
When you fi rst create objects in Atmosphere, they are unlit and appear as uniform gray shapes in the Player view,
because no lighting has been calculated for them. Pressing the Start button on the Controls tab of the Lighting
Control starts the process of generating Light Maps for the environment. The time required to do this will depend on
the number of light sources and objects in the environment and is generally longer for more complex environments.
Three progress bars track the process, and you can stop lighting at any time with the stop button.
i
You cannot edit Solid Objects while the lighting is being calculated. Attempting to do so will present a warning dialog
box. You can stop the lighting solution at any time using the Stop button.
The Lighting Control palette includes Start and Stop buttons
The lighting process can require many minutes or even hours depending on the complexity of the Scene. Once
lighting is done, the information is saved in the Light Maps. Atmosphere preserves Light Maps so they don't normally
need to be redone once a scene has been lighted.
Just above the progress bars is a Status label which shows the current task:
• Initializing Light Maps: allocates and clears memory for lighting calculations.
• Gathering Light for Faces: collects all light from background and the Sun sources as well as emissive surfaces
• Distributing Light: calculates the light bouncing from non-emissive surfaces that were illuminated by the previous
step.
• Done: displayed when lighting calculations are complete.