Real World Lighting

Contains controls for using real world lighting values with Ray Traced images. That is, with no Radiosity or Particle Tracing solution present in memory.

Ray Tracing dialog box with Real World Lighting section expanded.

When Real World Lighting is enabled, ray traced images are rendered using the same lighting attenuation and lumen values as those used with radiosity and particle tracing. This lets you set lighting levels using ray trace, without having to compute multiple radiosity or particle-tracing solutions. Specifically, just like radiosity and particle tracing, Real World Lighting uses the Lumens values of light sources, forces attenuation on for all lights, and uses the same type of physically accurate attenuation (with the intensity of the light falling off with the square of the distance). With Real World Lighting, you can use the interactive brightness and contrast sliders to adjust the brightness of ray-traced views.

With Real World Lighting off, ray tracing behaves as in earlier releases, ignoring the Lumens values of light sources, using the attenuation distance specified for each light, where the intensity of the light falls off linearly with distance (as opposed to the square of the distance). This mode is provided for compatibility with earlier ray tracing, as well as to provide lighting that is more compatible with Phong renderings.

Adapt to Brightness

Sets the intensity (in lumens per square master unit) of the middle of the display range. That is, when the image is rendered, the brightness range of the image is adjusted so that the specified intensity is near the middle of the display range.

Display Contrast

Sets the display contrast for subsequent rendered images. Allowable values range from 1.0 (maximum contrast) through to 5.0 (softer image).