Topics covered in this Lesson:

Basic Lighting and Rendering

If you have successfully worked your way through this level, you should be able to create some decent looking models in AutoCAD. The next step is learning to render them. This lesson will include a look at the new lighting and rendering options in AutoCAD 2007.

Looking at the image below, from Lesson 3-16, you'll notice that it has a background of clouds, shadows and looks (if you squint) real. You should already know how to create the model, view in a perspective view, add materials, map them and look at them in the viewport. The next step is to create lighting, add a background and render the scene out to a file.

This lesson will use the house model as an example. If you didn't draw it (yes, you should have) here is file that you can download as well as the textures used.

Here's the drawing 'as-is' with the Visual Style set to Realistic - with materials added, but not mapped.

Note that it looks very rough at this point

Now with the materials mapped, it's starting to look more realistic:

Looking better, but not there yet.

Next step is to add a background to the scene. To do this, you'll have to create a new view. Set up a perspective view similar to what's shown above (see Lesson 3-4) and name it using the VIEW command. Under the General settings, you will see one for Background. Select this and choose Image.

Find the sky.jpg and select it in the next dialog, then select the "Adjust Image " button.

This will give you the next dialog that allows to scale the image for the background. This is similar to setting your Windows desktop background. Choose Stretch in this example.

Press OK and OK and Apply and OK to get back to the drawing screen. If all went well, then it should look something like this:

Ok, not the best background, but you now know the concept.

So now you have the model, the materials, the mapping and the background. All that is left is some light and shadows. There are several ways to add lights in AutoCAD, and that will be described in a lesson yet to come (sorry). In this example, you will add sunlight to the scene, and it will be based on your geographic location.

To do this, type in SUNPROPERTIES or (menu: View > Render > Light > Sun Properties). It will give you this palette:

This palette allows you to control the Sun. Yes, it sounds very powerful, and it is. First you must turn on the Sun, if it isn't already. Then select the time and day sometime you like (in daylight). Finally, pick on the "Launch Geographic Location" button shown to the left. This will open a dialog that will allow you to pick the nearest city to you or your exact co-ordinates. As you set it, you should see the results in your drawing area. If it seems too bright, you can also adjust the intensity of the Sun. Try different settings until you get the look that you like. Note: If you selected Las Vegas as your Location, and you have lawn, your water bill will be quite expensive.

To render the scene, type in RENDER. You should get something like this:

Now when you render a final image, there are many options available to you. Mostly it depends on the end use of the rendering.To adjust these settings, type in RPREF (menu: View > Render > Advanced Render Settings...) to get this palette full of options.

To get a good quality rendering like the one above, set the top setting to Presentation. This will set the defaults to the best settings. Make sure that you have materials and shadows on. Render out to the window and choose the size that you want it to be. Once you have the setting you want, type RENDER again and view your results. If you like what you have done, you can save an image file from the render window.

That's the basics of rendering, practice with different settings and even experiment with light (use the LIGHT command). I hope to develop a lighting tutorial soon.

Once again, you have learned some easy tools that will allow to produce a good rendering of an object. Of course there are many variations and a lot of detail would go into a larger corporate presentation, but it only takes time, practice and experience.

For practice, many people will measure out their home and model it and then render it. This is a great exercise. Also, here is a good site that offers some more advanced 3D exercises.

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