The Environment panel

Environment panel

The Environment panel allows you to change the lighting and background of your scene. These settings apply in both Model and Capture modes.

Lighting

Under the Lighting tab, you're able to set up Image Based Lighting (IBL) or change settings for the Key, Fill, and Rim lights. The names Key, Fill, and Rim describe how scene lights are used in Modeler's default light setup, but there are no limitations to how you can adjust them.

There is one parameter that applies to both IBL and lights, "Lock to scene". This toggles whether lighting is locked to the camera or to the scene. When locked to the scene, lights and IBL stay in set positions, so moving the camera does not change the rotation of the IBL or the position of the lights. When not locked to the scene, lights and the IBL will be locked to the camera.

Image Based Lighting (IBL)

Image Based Lighting is a method of lighting a 3D scene with a panoramic image that creates high quality reflections and quickly creates a realistic lighting setup. Modeler supports IBL with a collection of HDR panoramic images. You can use IBL by itself or together with the Key, Fill, and Rim lights to fully customize your lighting setup.

The following parameters are available for IBLs:

• Light on: Toggle IBL lighting on or off.
• Intensity: Adjust the brightness of the light.
• IBL: Select an IBL scene.
• Rotation: Rotate the IBL scene.
• Specular only: Limit the effect of the IBL to only specular channels. This allows the IBL to be reflected while minimally effecting the rest of the lighting setup.
• Show IBL: Toggle whether the IBL scene is displayed in the background of your scene.

Key, Fill, and Rim lights

All three lights have the same settings available:

• Light on: toggle the light on or off.
• Color: Adjust the hue, saturation, and brightness of the light. The last bar of the Color section shows the currently selected color.
• Intensity: adjust the strength of the light.
• Rotation: Change the angle of the light horizontally.
• Altitude: Change the angle of the light vertically.
• Cast shadows: Turn shadows on or off for the chosen light.
• Shadow softness: Adjust the sharpness or softness of shadow edges.
• Reset all: Reset all of the above settings to their defaults for all lights.

BACKGROUND

Background settings change the background of the Modeler scene.

• Custom background color: Toggle whether to use the current theme's default background color, or allow selection of a custom color.
• Color: Change the background color.
• Gradient intensity: Adjust the strength of the vignette gradient.
• Show IBL: The background is only visible if show IBL is turned off. 
• Blurriness: When show IBL is turned on, blurriness changes the appearance of the IBL. This does not effect the reflections of the IBL or how the IBL affects lighting.

Ground

Currently, only one setting is available. Here you can turn the Ground plane on or off.