Rendering in Alias

Rendering is the process of generating a two-dimensional image of a three-

dimensional scene, somewhat like taking a photograph with a camera or filming
with a motion picture camera.

Like photography, rendering requires that you determine a number of factors

before you actually render the image. You need to:

Model the objects

Assign shaders and textures to objects
Optimize the scene
Light the scene
Set the size of the image to be produced

Rendering is an iterative and experimental process—altering your environment to

suit the needs of your rendering image.

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 Hardware Rendering
Hardware shading attempts to show as realistic an image as possible while
maintaining interactive speeds. Because of these speed considerations, not all
rendering attributes are supported, and the hardware shading accuracy depends on
your graphics card's capabilities. Per-vertex shading does not support as many
rendering attributes as per-pixel shading. Access to per-pixel shading is
determined by the graphics card you have on your computer.

Software Rendering will be covered in a later lesson.

Tools for Hardware Rendering

Many of the tools you will use to set up your hardware renders were originally
designed to be used for software rendering. You will find some option boxes have
‘software’ and ‘hardware’ tabs at the top. Make sure you select the ‘hardware’
option during this lesson.

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 Hardware Shade and Control Panel Shading
There are two different ways to get a shaded image
of a model in Alias. Although you can get similar
results at a basic level, the two methods have a
different purpose:

Control Panel Shading

The purpose of the Control Panel Shading is to
analyze the surface quality, typically in terms of
highlights and how light moves across the
surface. It is possible to assign different colors to
different surfaces, but these assignments can be
easily lost or changed.

Hardware Shade and Shaders

The Hardware Shading is designed to illustrate
the materials of a design by using shaders and
textures.

Both methods use the same terminology for

tessellation and quality.

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 Tessellation
Before surfaces can be rendered, they must be tessellated, that is, polygonal
objects approximating the surfaces have to be calculated.

Tessellation Tolerance
The value for the tessellation tolerance is the maximum allowable distance between
the actual surface and the polygonal approximation. For large designs, such as
cars or boats, you can use a much larger tolerance value than for small products or
jewelry design.

Fast/Accurate
The Fast option often gives good results, and tessellation will be much faster.
Occasionally, however, some surfaces will give poor results, and you will need to
switch to Accurate to solve the problem.

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 Lots of Options in Hardware Shade
The options will be discussed in detail in the following pages. To get started, just
use the basic tools:

All Windows
If checked, geometry in all modeling
windows is shaded. If not checked,
geometry is shaded in the current modeling
window only.

All Geometry
If checked, all geometry is shaded. If not
checked, only the picked (active) geometry
using the picked lights is shaded. If no
lights are active, all lights are used.

Shade Off/Shade On
Toggles the shaded view on and off.

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 Quality and Graphics Cards

The quality you will be able to achieve is dependent on the graphics card and the
performance of your computer.

If you set high quality levels on large models, it may slow down interaction so much
that you cannot work with the model effectively.

Keep the quality settings low as you are setting up (particularly anti-aliasing and
accurate), and then, only when you are ready to output your image, increase the
quality settings.

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 Anti-Alias Shaded Settings

Software Anti-Alias
Set this option to Low, Medium, High, or User Defined to specify the level of software anti-
aliasing. By default, this option is set to Off.

When you select User Defined, the following two options appear:

Samples sets the number of samples that will be taken and averaged. Generally, you
should choose values lower than 36. Choosing a value that is too high for your scene
may result in some artifacts, like banding.

Pixel Sample Radius

To create a smooth image, the technique used moves the camera slightly. Setting a
value lower than 1 in this option means the camera jitters less than a pixel; values greater
than 1 jitter it more than 1 pixel. Choosing a value that is high results in greater blurring
than choosing a low value.

Allocate Hardware Anti-Alias Resources on Startup

Check this box to use hardware anti-aliasing. You need to restart your computer for this
setting to apply.

Hardware Anti-Alias
Set this option to On to use hardware anti-aliasing. You need to restart your computer for
this setting to apply.

Once you have chosen the appropriate settings in the option boxes, you only need to select
the tools to turn the anti-aliasing on (check mark) or off (no check mark).
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 Lights You Can Control

All Lights: Shade surfaces using the lights in the scene—up to a

maximum of eight.
Selected Lights: Shade surfaces using any picked lights—up to a
maximum of eight.

Pre-Set Lights

Warm Cold: Shade surfaces using a preset combination of warm- and

cool-colored lights.
Contrast: Shade surfaces using a preset combination of lights to
create a wide range—from highlights to shadows.
Default: Shade surfaces using a direction light at the camera and an
ambient light. This is the fastest option. This option may be hardware
accelerated.

The pre-set lights always come from the direction of the viewer;
therefore, as you tumble the view, the model is always lit.

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 Light Objects
These are created in the scene and
can be modified by the user to
create customized lighting. These
can be used in both Software and
Hardware rendering.

Creating New Lights

You can create additional lights by
using Render>Create Lights and
clicking in the modeling window to
place the light.

Working with Lights

Lights can be picked using
Pick>Object or Pick>Component and
can be moved, deleted, put onto
layers, and so on.

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 Enable Environment Effects

Of the five environment effects settings, you will start by looking at only two: Show
Background and Ground Plane. (The Use Environment setting will be covered
later in this lesson).

With very little effort, these two settings can really improve the look of your
rendering. However, you need to use the Environment Shader.

The Environment Shader

The Environment Shader is designed to be used with both Software and Hardware
rendering. Unlike material shaders, there is only ever one Environment Shader as it
represents the ‘world’ that your objects sit in.

Later, you will use the Environment Shader at the same time as creating your own
material shaders.

At this stage, you can access the Environment Shader from the HW Shade Settings
window—just to set up the ground plane and background effects.

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 Bookmarks

When you set up a scene, the composition of

that scene can be as important as the shaders
you use.

When you have found a viewpoint that you

like, save it as a bookmark so that you can
always return to that same view.

Bookmarks ‘save’ the information on whether

a view is shaded or not. This means you can
put together a series of bookmarks that can
be used in a presentation, using the Page Up
and Page Down keys (in the same way as
you use the instruction pages in the exercise
files).

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 Visualize Workflow

An alternative to just choosing the Visualization Control Panel is to switch to a

Visualize Workflow.

This switches to the Visualization Control Panel, but it also switches marking menus
and shelves so that you can have a completely customized working environment for
rendering.

This is only an option used by experienced users who do a lot of rendering and
want to increase their efficiency. At this stage in your learning, it is easier to only
change the Control Panel.

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 For more information on how
to use the Multi-lister,
choose Help>What’s this?
from the menu.

Then click on Render>Multi-

Lister>Shaders to open the
help window for shaders.

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 Shading Models
The choice of shading model will make the biggest difference on the appearance of
a shader as well as activating different parameters.

The Blinn shading model is the most versatile and will be the one you use most.

Lambert
A matte surface (for example, chalk, matte paint, or unpolished surface)

Phong
A glassy or glossy surface (for example, ABS or SAN copolymer, which is often
used for car moldings, telephones, and bathroom fittings)

Blinn
Can range from a metallic surface (for example, brass, aluminum) to a soft plastic

Lightsource
A special effect where light falling on the surface is summed and averaged, and no
complex shading is done. The surface does not act as a light. That is, it does not
illuminate other objects.

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 Why Fake it?
There are two processes available in software rendering in Alias: Raycasting and
Raytracing.

Raytracing
Raytracing is more sophisticated and calculates the true reflections between
modeled objects. This is only available in software rendering and not in
Hardware Shade.

Even with full Raytracing, ‘fake’ reflection maps are often used. To build
models of an environment that are complex and realistic enough is too time
consuming—it is much quicker to use an image instead.

Raycasting
Raycasting is quicker but doesn’t calculate true reflections (or refractions in
transparent objects). The Hardware Shading gives results similar to
Raycasting.

And so the only option for simulating reflections is to use a Reflection Map.

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 Image-Based Lighting
Image-based lighting (IBL) offers additional realism through the use of high dynamic
range (HDR) images as environment maps and the treatment of that environment
map as a source of light, not just a reflection map.

IBL takes reflection maps a step further into realistic rendering by replacing the
standard 24-bit reflection maps with HDR images.

HDR images include more lighting data than a standard 24-bit image does. This
information can be used effectively in environments to capture the bright and dark
areas of the environment in not only reflections but in the specular highlights,
diffuse component, and all other components of the shader.

HDR images are environment maps and may be spherical (latitude/longitude maps)
or cube environment maps stored as vertical cross images, which have an aspect
ratio of 3:4 (width to height).

The lighting produced by an HDR image (since it has a wide range) usually needs
to be ‘toned’ to represent lighting that is suitable for the scene. This toning is
calculated near the end of the rendering process and takes the full scene into
account, as well as actual lights that are used in the scene.

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 Choose Help>What’s this? from the menu.
Then click on Render>Multi-Lister>Shaders to open
the help window for shaders.

Click on the Shader parameters section and you

will get a detailed description of the shader
parameters.

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 To change settings for Visual State buttons 1 - 3
Click the button for the Visual State preset you want to change.
Click Shade Settings and adjust the hardware shading settings in the Hardware
Shade dialog box.
Click Environment Editor and adjust the environment settings in the Environment
Editor.
To save your changes, click Save To Prefs.

To change settings for the File State button

Click the button for the File State.
Click Shade Settings and adjust the hardware shading settings in the Hardware
Shade dialog box.
Click Environment Editor and adjust the environment settings in the Environment
Editor.
Save the file.

To turn off hardware shading

Click the Shading Off diagnostic shade button.

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