Applying a Standard Environment

An environment is a simplified simulation of a landscape surrounding your model and directly reflected by your model. It is an efficient way to get a very quick feedback of the illumination behavior of your model and check its integration in its final environment. For example, placing neon lights as a 3D-texture on the ceiling will be used for car body design, while referring to a picture of a Norwegian forest for the walls will produce an impressive marketing image of a newly designed chainsaw.

There are two types in providing a 3D mock-up an intended environment.

• 3D Environment

• Default Reflection Map

3D Environment

Creating an Environment

1. Click Create Box Environment if you want to create an environment with a rectangular shape (to represent a room for example).

2. Zoom out then click anywhere in the geometry area to deselect the environment.

   The Box environment is taken as an example in this scenario but you can also:
   click Create Sphere Environment if you want an environment being a non-dimensional sphere with two hemispheres: top and bottom (to simulate a sky for example):
   click Create Cylinder Environment if you want an environment having a cylindrical shape:
   Showroom environments (square or cylindrical shape) correspond to a square or cylinder room without windows, with a texture or an image on the walls, floor and ceiling. This type of environment is a very efficient tool for design study of very close reflection, for instance, reflection of rows of neon lights on a car body. Their size can be set and they can be positioned at a preferred location.  They are always visible and will appear as other geometrical elements of the model at their defined location. Sky-ground environments (spherical shape) will be used to simulate the reflections of a real world onto the geometry. Texture simulating grounds or skies will provide good results. They totally surround the model.
   	As soon as you create an environment, it becomes the active one. Any previously created environment is deactivated in the specification tree, only one active environment being taken into account at rendering time. This also applies for environments in currently active DMU reviews: they are deactivated whenever an environment becomes active. Note that their former state is not stored and thus will not be restored if the review of the currently active environment becomes deactivated.
   In our example, Environment 2 has been created and Environment 1 is deactivated.
   To activate an environment, right-click it in the specification tree then select Environment Active.

3. Position your pointer over the edges then use the green segments displayed to resize the environment walls:

   drag a segment to resize the walls according to the edges press the Shift key and drag a segment to resize the walls according to the center.

Editing an Environment

4. Double-click the environment in the specification tree to edit it.
   Depending on the type of environment created, the following dialog boxes appear:
    

   For a box environment:

   For a spherical environment:

   For a cylindrical environment:

   The options available in the dialog boxes are as follows: Environment Name: You can specify the environment name in this box. Dimensions: For box environment: Use the slider, type the value, or use the arrows to change the Length, Width, and Height. For spherical environment: Use the slider, type the value, or use the arrows to change the Radius. For cylindrical environment: Use the slider, type the value, or use the arrows to change Radius and Height. Position/Orientation: Use the slider, type the value, or use the arrows to change the X, Y, and/or Z position and orientation of the environment. Wall Textures: Select the particular wall and apply a texture to it by clicking under the Texture Definition section. Click to reset the values. You can preview the wall images and their positions in the dialog box under the Wall Texture section. Selecting the One face check box for the spherical environment disables the bottom face. Texture Definition: The Top image field defines the path to the applied wall texture. Scale U and Scale V sliders determine how the texture is stretched along u- and v-axes. Position U and Position V sliders determine the position of the texture along u- and v-axes. By default, the image is centered. Orientation defines the rotation of the texture on surfaces.   The above fields are enabled only after a texture is selected for a wall. Click button to resize U and V proportionally. This is especially useful for square shapes such as the Floor material. When this option is activated, the button changes to . Flip along U : Inverts the material texture along the U axis. Flip along V : Inverts the material texture along the V axis. Enable Shadows : Enables shadow casting on the wall. Fit All in Wall : Automatically scales the texture in order to fit it in the wall. Lock Texture Fit: Select this check box to prevent texture fit alteration when modifying the environment size.

5. Click OK to close the dialog box.

• Click the Dimensions tab to define the environment size. In our example, specify the Length, Width and Height of the walls in millimeters.
  
   
• Click the Position tab to interactively define:
  • the environment translation from the origin along the X, Y or Z axis
  • the environment translation along the X, Y, or Z Axis.
    
     
• Click the Feature Properties tab to obtain general information on the currently selected environment, e.g. its name, its creation date, etc.

You can also interactively position your environment by dragging the compass and dropping it onto the environment.

Default Reflection Map

1. Click Change Reflection Image if you want to map an image for reflection on the 3D mock-up. A dialog box is displayed allowing you to change the choose  the default Reflection map.
   

2. Select the required image from the dialog box.
3. Click OK. Default Reflection Mapping is done on the 3D mock-up.
4. Right-click on applied material in specification tree to visualize material properties of the 3D mock-up.
   
5. Click in Reflectivity a dialog box with two tabs will be displayed. The Predefined tab displays the predefined environment maps and the Custom tab displays current existing custom panel.
   

• Custom:
  • You can select an image of your choice for reflection.
  • You can modify the Fresnel effect (Non-Linear reflection).
  • You can build a new image with surrounding images with the environmental image generator.

6. Click OK to close the dialog box.