The Presenter dockable window is used to set up materials and lights in your scene and render it with more realism and effects. You can also use it to edit predefined materials and apply them to items in the scene, add lights to the scene, and set up rules for applying the materials to other files in the same project set up with the same parameters. You can define and apply your materials and lights to a model and save the settings into an NWF file so that as the model is updated, the materials and lights remain the same.
Materials can also be brought through from CAD applications via the 3DS, DWG, and DGN file formats, or by exporting from 3D Studio Viz or Max. See Work with Files for more details on this.
The Presenter window contains the following tabs:
- Materials. Includes a variety of materials, which can be selected and applied to individual or groups of model items. You can also use this tab to create new materials, or customize existing materials.
- Lighting. Includes a variety of lighting options, which can be selected and applied to the model. You can also customize lighting options, if you want.
- RPC. Contains Rich Photorealistic Content (or RPC), which you can add from various sources, including websites. RPCs can include images of people, trees, cars and so on.
- Effects. Includes a variety of backgrounds and environments, which can be selected and applied to the model scene. Some existing backgrounds can be customized, or new backgrounds can be created. You can also add backgrounds and environments from other sources, such as websites.
- Rendering. Includes a variety of rendering styles, which can be selected and applied to the model. A render style affects the way a scene is rendered. You can also use this tab to create new render styles, or customize existing render styles.
- Texture Space. Defines the way in which a texture is applied to a model item, for example, applying a cylindrical texture space to a pipe will provide a more natural effect.
- Rules. Applies materials to models according to user-defined criteria. Rules can be used, for example, to speed up the application of materials to groups of items.
The Materials, Lighting, Effects, and Rendering tabs are divided into two panes. The left pane contains the archives and the right pane contains the palette, which defines what materials, lighting, effects, and render styles are used in the scene. Archives are shown in a tree structure and are defined in the LightWorks Archive (.lwa) format.
Model Appearance
While Presenter can be used for photo-realistic renderings, it can also be used for OpenGL interactive rendering. Once you’ve set up the scene with Presenter, you can view the materials and lights in Autodesk Navisworks in real time.
For more information, see Control Model Appearance.