Autodesk LIGHTSCAPE, Manual

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Rendering
How to create image files from
your radiosity solution.
Rendering is the process of taking the three-dimensional radiosity solution and
converting it to an image.
Summary
In this chapter, you learn about:
• Rendering images with OpenGL
• Rendering images with ray tracing
• Rendering multiple views
• Ray tracing an area
• Batch rendering
• Rendering across a network.
About Rendering in Lightscape
In Lightscape, you can create images in two ways.
The first is to use OpenGL to render a view of a radi-
osity solution. The quality of this image will be
essentially the same as what you see in the Graphic
window since OpenGL is used as the interactive
display engine of Lightscape.
The second way to create an image in Lightscape is to
use ray tracing. This technique produces a better
quality image of a radiosity solution that includes
specular highlights and reflections as well as proce-
dural textures and bump maps.
In general, OpenGL images are considerably faster
to generate because they can be hardware acceler-
ated. However, they are limited to rendering the
direct and diffuse lighting effects of the radiosity
solution. A ray traced image takes longer to generate
but produces the best possible quality.
Although ray tracing in Lightscape takes longer than
OpenGL rendering, it does not take as long as tradi-
tional ray tracing because it uses the direct and
indirect illumination values already calculated in the
radiosity solution.