Enviro Light

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Enviro Light

Node Description and Purpose: The Enviro Light node provides Global Illumination lighting to a scene, with separate control over the strength and color of the effect as applied to surfaces and atmosphere. Use of the Enviro Light allows for much more realistic lighting and shadows in your scene. The Enviro Light is a part of every default scene and its use is recommended for best results. However use of Global Illumination also increases render time and can cause issues in consistency between frames of an animation. Quality settings for Global Illumination are controlled in the Render node.

Node Type: Lighting

Settings:

  • Mode: Set the lighting mode for the Enviro Light. Global Illumination is the default and provides the most realistic lighting in normal situations. Ambient Occlusion is an alternative method that only calculates lighting occlusion and not additional light bounces. This produces a less realistic result that can be useful for getting a different look to your scene, gaining additional lighting control, and other special effects. TBC
  • Strength on surfaces: This setting controls the strength of the Enviro Light's effect specifically on surfaces, including terrain and objects. Default value is 1, higher values are multiples of the default.
  • Colour on surfaces: Set the color of the Enviro Light's lighting contribution to surface lighting. The slider controls the Brightness value of the colour. Normal values for Brightness range from 0-1, with 1 being brightest. The square colour swatch to the right links to a full Colour Picker where you can set Hue and Saturation and access other colour picking options.
  • Strength in atmosphere: This setting controls the strength of the Enviro Light's effect specifically in the atmosphere, including clouds. Default value is 1, higher values are multiples of the default.
  • Colour in atmosphere: Set the color of the Enviro Light's lighting contribution to atmospheric lighting. The slider controls the Brightness value of the colour. Normal values for Brightness range from 0-1, with 1 being brightest. The square colour swatch to the right links to a full Colour Picker where you can set Hue and Saturation and access other colour picking options.

Also see:

Terragen 2 Global Illumination

A single object or device in the node network which generates or modifies data and may accept input data or create output data or both, depending on its function. Nodes usually have their own settings which control the data they create or how they modify data passing through them. Nodes are connected together in a network to perform work in a network-based user interface. In Terragen 2 nodes are connected together to describe a scene.