The Environment panel contains settings that determine which environment will be used in Maxwell when the scene is rendered.
Toolbar
The Environment panel's toolbar contains the following items:
| Button | Function |
|---|---|
| Undo/Redo | These two drop-down lists hold the history of actions which have been executed in the Environment panel. They are cleared when a new document is opened. |
| Presets List | This drop-down provides a list of environment presets which have been stored previously. To remove a particular preset, click the red X next to its name in the list. |
| Add Preset | Click this button to store the current settings as a new environment preset. |
| Load .SKY File | Click this button to load a Maxwell .SKY file from your file system. |
| Save .SKY File | Click this button to save the current environment as a Maxwell .SKY file. |
Type
There are four Types of environment available in Maxwell.
Sky Dome
The Sky Dome three different Environment Types.
| Type | Description |
|---|---|
| Sky | The scene is lit using either Maxwell's Physical Sky model, or a dome (i.e. Constant Dome) of light. |
| Image Based | The scene is lit using HDR images. |
| None | No environment is rendered. A render error will occur if Environment is set to None, and there are no other sources of light in the scene. |
Sky > Constant Dome
The Constant Dome option operates in one of two Color Source modes: Application and Custom.
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Application Mode |
In Application mode, the only parameter is Intensity, which adjusts the overall brightness of the environment. Technically, this mode uses a combination of Sky Constant Dome and Image Based Lighting: the overall illumination of the scene comes from a pure white, dynamically-generated HDR file, and the gradient of the background comes from Maxwell's Sky Constant Dome, which has its Horizon and Zenith colors set according to values found in the current SketchUp Style.
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Custom Mode |
In Custom mode, the standard Maxwell Sky Constant Dome is used. The overall brightness of this dome can be adjusted using the Intensity parameter. The Horizon and Zenith colors of the dome may be set independently, with the transition rate between them being determined by the Mid Point parameter.
Sky > Physical Sky
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Following is a summary of what effects the various parameters contained in this panel have on the rendered environment. For a more detailed discussion of these parameters, see Physical Sky.
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When the Image Based environment type is selected, environmental lighting in Maxwell will be provided by the specified HDR image, which will be mapped onto a virtual dome which encompasses the scene. While each channel has its own Intensity value, there is also a global Intensity modifier value, which affects all channels together. When Interpolate is enabled, a bicubic interpolation will be applied to the pixels of assigned HDR images; this can be useful when the images being used are of a resolution low enough for pixelation to be visible in the image. Each channel has a drop-down which allows for setting the source for that channel. Possible channel sources are:
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Each also has Scale, Offset, and Intensity values. Scale and Offset allow the image to be stretched and translated along the U an V axes, while Intensity increases or decreases the brightness of the image. Additionally, the Background channel has a Screen Map mode, in which the HDRI is mapped flat against the image plane, rather than being projected from a sphere encompassing the scene.
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Note that the sun will only be rendered when the Illumination Channel is set to use Active Sky (or Background, when the Background Channel is using Active Sky). |
None
In this mode, no environment will be used; all lighting will come from any emitter materials which are contained in the scene.
Sun
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The Sun in Maxwell, while taking its physical position from the position of the sun (i.e. from the Shadows settings) in SketchUp, is enabled or disabled separately. This is done mainly because it is not always desirable to have shadows enabled in SketchUp, even when it may be desired to render with the Sun enabled in Maxwell.
Type
The sun may either use a Physical color model based on temperature, or a Custom RGB color.
Temperature
Temperature of the sun’s spectral radiation, shown when Type is set to Physical. The default value of 5777 is the most common value measured outside the Earth’s atmosphere.
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Color
This is the custom RGB color for the sun, shown when Type is set to Custom.
Intensity
This is a multiplier which controls the amount of light emitted from the sun. Values higher than the default 1.0 will cause the sun emit more light, and vice versa.
Temperature
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Radius
This is a multiplier for the radius of the sun disk. It may be used for artificially softening the sun's shadows, creating dramatic compositions, or for speeding up rendering in some scenes, albeit at the cost of realism.
Date & Time
Date and time are always inferred from the SketchUp Scene, and therefore do not appear in the Environment panel.
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This is a plugin feature which dynamically generates a ground plane:
. The plane is centered along X/Y axes on the camera's position, at the specified elevation in world XYZ space in the scene, and operates in one of four modes:
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As expected, these parameters simply set the diameter and elevation, in meters, of the generated ground plane.