Use environmental features to set up atmospheric effects or background images.
You can enhance a rendered image with atmospheric effects such as fog and depth cueing or by adding a bitmap image as a background.
Fog / Depth Cue Effects
Fog and depth cueing are similar atmospheric effects that cause objects to appear to fade as they increase in distance from the camera. Fog uses a white color , an depth cueing uses black.
The RENDERENVIRONMENT command sets the fog or depth cue parameters such as color, distances, and fog percentages.
Fog and depth cueing are based on the front or back clipping planes of the camera coupled with the near and far distance settings in the Render Environment dialog box. For example, the back clipping plane of a camera is active and located 30 feet from the camera location. If you want fog to start 15 feet from the camera and spread away indefinitely, you set the Near Distance to 50 and the Far Distance to 100.
The density of the fog or depth cueing is controlled by the Near and Far Fog Percentages. These settings have a range of 0.0001 to 100. Higher values mean the fog or depth cueing is more opaque.
Backgrounds
A background is basically a backdrop behind the model. Backgrounds can be a single color, a multi-color gradient, or a bitmap image.
Backgrounds work best when you are rendering still images, or animations in which the view doesn’t change or the camera doesn't move. Once set, the background is associated with the named view or camera and is saved with the drawing.
You set backgrounds from the View Manager.