Display Settings

Contains controls that determine the appearance of the intermediate and final rendered display images, and the frequency of the intermediate images.

For designs without any specular effects (reflections, transparency, highlights), a Smooth final display is recommended. For designs with specular effects, a Ray Tracing final display is recommended.

Displaying intermediate images lets you monitor the progress of the solution, and to detect problems without having to wait until processing is complete. If necessary, you can enter a Reset to terminate the processing.

Turning on Wiremesh Overlay overlays the radiosity element mesh on top of the intermediate images. This can be useful for checking any anomalies in the rendered images.

When Ambient is on, an approximation of the unshot energy (light) is added, as a global ambient value, to intermediate and final images.

You can use the Brightness Multiplier setting to increase the brightness of each pixel in the intermediate and final images. Thus you can interactively control the overall display brightness of a radiosity solution without the need to recompute it. Consider this method of display control only after first adjusting your light sources appropriately.

If a very brightly colored Area light source is directly visible, it may appear white, even though it may have a strong tint to it. This is because of the limitations of the display and does not affect the color of the light that is being emitted. You can verify that the light source is colored by temporarily turning down Brightness Scale.

Ambient in this dialog box is independent of the Ambient setting in MicroStation's Global Lighting dialog box. When rendering images of the radiosity solution, the Global Lighting Ambient and Flashbulb settings should be turned off, or set to zero.

For Smooth and Wiremesh display, only objects that are participating in the radiosity solution, as determined by the Material Usage settings, will be displayed (if they are visible).

(Display with) Ambient

If on, adds in a global ambient value to the intermediate and final images. Value is based on the amount of unshot (light) energy remaining.

(Display with) Wiremesh Overlay

If on, overlays the radiosity element mesh on intermediate images.

(Display with) Shooting Patch Highlighted

If on, the patch shooting the light energy for the current shot is highlighted in the selected view.

Display Frequency

Sets the number of shots between each intermediate display.

Intermediate Display

Sets the display mode for the intermediate display: None (no intermediate display), Wiremesh, Luminance, Illuminance, Smooth, Ray Trace.

Final Display

Sets the display mode for the final display: None, Wiremesh, Luminance, Illuminance, Smooth Shaded, Ray Trace.

Of the Final Display options: None is useful for generating solutions to be saved and later rendered. Luminance provides “false color” display of the light reflected by surfaces, where Red represents the most through to Blue, which represents the least. Colors range from: Red > Orange > Yellow > Green > Blue. Illuminance provides “false color” display of the light (excluding ambient) reaching surfaces. Red represents the most through to Blue, which represents the least. Colors range from: Red > Orange > Yellow > Green > Blue.

Color mode

Sets the display mode for the display settings.

• Color
— The result is displayed in color.

• Grey Scale
— The result is displayed in grey scale.

Brightness Multiplier/Adapt to brightness

If on, lets you adjust the display brightness of a solution. The option button lets you choose between two methods — Brightness Multiplier, or Adapt to brightness.

• Brightness Multiplier
— Lets you adjust the display brightness of the solution by multiplying all brightnesses by the specified scale factor.

Setting Brightness Multiplier to 1.0 effectively turns it off, as no Brightness Multiplier will be applied.

• Adapt to Brightness
— Lets you specify 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 the specified intensity is near the middle of the display range.

Select

Clicking this button lets you identify a point in the view to set the median of the display range, for either Brightness Multiplier or Adapt to Brightness, as follows:.

• Brightness Multiplier — Once a point is selected, the Brightness Multiplier will be set such that the brightness of the selected point will be near the center of the display range the next time the view is rendered.

• Adapt to Brightness — Selecting a point in the view sets the Adapt to brightness value to the luminance of that point. The next time a view is rendered, the display is adjusted such that this brightness will be near the center of the display range.

Display Contrast

Sets the display contrast for the next rendering. A setting of 1.0 presents the maximum contrast, while larger values (5.0 maximum) soften the contrast of the image and increase the range of brightnesses that can be displayed.

Display Range (lumens per square mu)

This color bar legend shows the range of brightness displayed for a solution using the current brightness settings. The color bar can appear in three forms:

• Blue to Red — for color luminance or illuminance display.

• Black to White — for gray scale display.

• Black to Yellow — for color rendered display.

Whenever a solution is present in memory, the maximum and minimum values for luminance are displayed beside the color bar. Luminance values are displayed in lumens per square master unit. As the values of the brightness controls are changed, the minimum and maximum luminance values update accordingly.