Global Properties

GI Engine

The settings in the GI Engine group control the way Global Illumination is computed for your scene.

setting	description	savable?
Min Depth	Sets the minimum number of bounces for indirect light rays. Set this value to match the final GI depth used when baking your levels.	No
Max Depth	Sets the maximum number of bounces for indirect light rays. Set this value to match the final GI depth used when baking your levels.	No
Baking Mode	Determines what parts of the scene are rendered: Camera Frustum bakes lightmaps only for the mesh instances that lie within the current field of view of the camera. This option gives faster results, requires additional rendering time when the user drives the camera to a new area of the scene. Entire Level bakes lightmaps for all instances in the scene. This option takes longer to render, but provides a complete preview of the whole level that does not need to be updated as the camera moves around.	No
Variance Limit	Specifies a limit for the variance within each lightmap, below which the sampling is considered good enough. While the variance in a lightmap is above this threshold, eRnsT continues to refine it progressively until the variance drops below the threshold. Preventing eRnsT from refining lightmaps any further once they have reached the variance limit can help to improve performance by freeing eRnsT to treat other lightmaps with higher variance. If this limit is set to the default value of 0, lightmaps are never considered good enough. eRnsT will continue refining all lightmaps until the session is terminated.	No
Diffuse Boost	Specifies a factor that is applied to the brightness of the indirect light that bounces off of textures in your scene. Tuning the value of this setting to match the content in your scene can dramatically increase the realism and effect of your lighting. Because dark surfaces do not reflect light as strongly as light surfaces, a scene that contains mostly dark materials will exhibit less indirect light. Any bounced illumination dies out quickly. This can make the scene appear dull and boring. Raising the value of this setting above 1 pushes the values of the diffuse textures toward white, and increases the indirect light in the scene. Values lower than 1 cause a corresponding reduction in the diffuse textures, causing light to bounce off each material less strongly than normal. This setting is equivalent to the <GISettings><diffuseBoost> setting in the Beast XML configuration file.	No
Emissive Scale	Specifies a factor that is applied to the brightness of emissive light effects when they are taken into account during GI. Values greater than 1 exaggerate emissive light effects, and values less than 1 dampen emissive light effects. This setting is equivalent to the <GISettings><emissiveScale> setting in the Beast XML configuration file.	No

Realtime Renderer

The settings in the Realtime Renderer group control the way your scene is rendered in the eRnsT inteface.

setting	description	savable?
Exposure	Specifies a factor applied to the overall brightness of the rendering, useful for setting up high dynamic range lighting situations. The default value of 1.0 renders the scene normally without affecting the brightness, 2.0 doubles the on-screen intensity, 0.5 dims the display to be half as bright as the default value, etc.	No

Shadows

The settings in the Shadows group offer overrides for the bias used in shadow mapping calculations for point lights, spot lights and area lights. You may need to adjust these settings if you have problems with artifacts such as banding or grids appearing in your shadows.

These values are not savable.

Rendering

The settings in the Rendering group control what types of light information are displayed and baked.

setting	description	savable?
Lighting Mode	Determines whether the 3D view displays only lighting (Illumination Only), textures with lightmaps (Lit) or textures without lightmaps (Unlit). Note that for scenes that use physically based rendering, only the Illumination Only option is supported.	No
Direct Illumination	Sets a scaling factor that is applied to the direct illumination baked into the lightmaps.	No
Indirect Illumination	Sets a scaling factor that is applied to the indirect illumination baked into the lightmaps.	No
Variance Threshold	Determines the amount of noise reduction filtering performed on the lightmaps during rendering. If the variance of a lightmap is above this threshold, the light map will be filtered with maximum noise reduction, blurring the map and reducing high frequency noise. When the variance gets below this threshold, the amount of filtering is reduced as the variance decreases. If the variance reaches zero, the lightmap is displayed unfiltered for the sharpest possible result. The default value for this threshold uses strong noise reduction initially but converges to an unfiltered sharp result as the lightmaps get progressively more refined. Examples of possible values: 1000.0: Noise reduction is effectively disabled. This produces sharp details but initially noisy results. 0.0001: High noise reduction. This produces initially blurry lightmaps that end up sharp once they have been refined enough. 0.0: Full noise reduction. Lightmaps are always smooth and blurry with their details removed.	No
Lightmap Speed	Determines how fast the baked lightmaps will be generated and updated. This value provides a budget in bytes per second, assuming HDR floating-point output.	No

Gamma Correction

The Gamma Correction group controls the gamma used to display the rendered scene.

setting	description	savable?
Display Gamma	Specifies the gamma value used to convert the linear output result in the eRnsT viewer to a result appropriate for display on screen. You should specify a value appropriate for the display you are using.	No

These values are not savable.

Scene Info

The settings in the Scene Info group control the scale and coordinate system used to render your scene in the 3D view.

setting	description	savable?
Interface Scale	Set this value to match the unit length you use in your level editor or game engine. This controls the scale at which the objects in your scene are drawn in the 3D view, which in turn has the effect of controlling the relative size of the control widgets used to render your light sources, and the way any distance values you set for your light sources are interpreted. Equivalent to the Unit control in the main toolbar.	Yes
Up Axis	Set this value to indicate the Up axis in the coordinate system used in your level editor or game engine. The coordinate system is assumed to be right-handed. This controls the orientation with which the objects in your scene are drawn in the 3D view, which in turn has the effect of changing the way the camera controls operate. Equivalent to the Up control in the main toolbar.	Yes

setting

description

savable?

Interface Scale

Set this value to match the unit length you use in your level editor or game engine.

This controls the scale at which the objects in your scene are drawn in the 3D view, which in turn has the effect of controlling the relative size of the control widgets used to render your light sources, and the way any distance values you set for your light sources are interpreted.

Equivalent to the Unit control in the main toolbar.

Yes

Up Axis

Set this value to indicate the Up axis in the coordinate system used in your level editor or game engine. The coordinate system is assumed to be right-handed.

This controls the orientation with which the objects in your scene are drawn in the 3D view, which in turn has the effect of changing the way the camera controls operate.

Equivalent to the Up control in the main toolbar.

Yes