About Visual Effects

Use the Visual Effects panel to control a range of visual and lighting effects. Use together with Sun, Wind, and Cloud settings to customize your model's appearance.

Click to display the Visual Effects panel.

Visual Effects Panel

Experiment with these settings to see the differences each one makes

Brightness: Range between darkest and lightest colors in the image. High brightness reduces amount of black in colors, image looks like overexposed photograph. Low brightness increases amount of black in colors, image looks like a photograph taken with insufficient light. Contrast: Lighter tones get lighter and darker tones get darker. Light Intensity: Adjusts overall brightness and intensity of colors uniformly. Sun Color: Add a tint to simulation sun position. Colorize: Normal, Grayscale or Sepia. High Visual Quality: Rough versus high resolution rendering of image. Wireframe: Reduces features to three-dimensional skeletons, displaying only lines and vertices. Animation: Turns on/off animations of water waves and clouds. Turning this OFF will cause waves and clouds to remain still. Surface Opacity: Make the model surface transparent to see features below the terrain. Field of View: A wide FOV zooms out from current view and flattens features, like a wide-angle lens on a camera. Features appear smaller and further away than they actually are.

Examples

Effect	Definition	Example
Normal	Without any effects applied, a styled building looks like this.
Wireframe	Wireframe reduces features to three-dimensional skeletons, displaying only lines and vertices.
Field of View	A wide FOV setting zooms out from the current view and flattens features, much like a wide-angle lens on a camera. Features appear smaller and further away than they actually are.
Surface Opacity	Make the model surface transparent to see features below the terrain.
Brightness	Brightness is the range between the darkest and lightest colors in the image. High brightness reduces the amount of black in colors, so the image looks like an overexposed photograph. The example on the left shows high brightness. Low brightness increases the amount of black in colors, so the image looks like a photograph taken with insufficient light. The example on the right shows low brightness.
Contrast	When you increase the contrast in your model, lighter tones get lighter and darker tones get darker. This can produce more definition between areas of differing values, which gives the image more depth. The example on the left shows high contrast. When you decrease the contrast in your model, the distinction between light and dark is decreased. This produces a lighter, flatter look. The example on the right shows low contrast.
Sepia and Greyscale	Sepia displays the model in monochromatic shades of brown. Grayscale displays the model in monochromatic shades of gray.

Tip: If textures appear white and washed out in the Scenario viewer, try lowering settings for sun, light intensity, or brightness for the model, and republish the model.