Environments, Ambient Occlusion, and Rendering

Video captions: Welcome to VRED. The default environment in VRED is a studio. It contains a dome that the environment is applied to and shadow plane. You can apply your own images to the environment.

However, for now, we will use one of the example environments in the Asset Manager. Select the Environments tab, then the Autodesk VRED Assets folder to display the list of environments. Scroll down and LMB-drag Pacific Road onto the environment dome to apply it. You can add multiple environments and switch easily between them by clicking on these boxes to toggle their visibility. Next, we'll calculate ambient occlusion.

Ambient occlusion is proximity-based shadows. Calculating it will create shadows in the gaps of the model and greatly improve the realism of our rendering. So, select the Visualization menu and click on Ambient Occlusion Rendering. You can see that there are no shadows on this model, so let's calculate ambient occlusion and see the difference.

Go back to the Scenegraph and select the top node of the car. Select Scene > Bake Light and Shadows, and in the Direct Illumination section, click Ambient Occlusion. Use the default settings and click calculate all. Depending on your computer's capabilities, this will likely take several minutes.

Now, you can see what's added with ambient occlusion. In the Visualization menu, select Realistic Rendering. You may not have noticed, but the car is slightly below the ground of the environment. With the top node of the car still selected, click on Transform in the toolbar. This translation manipulator should be displaced. If a different manipulator is shown, click and hold this arrow and select Transform Manipulator. Hold the Shift key and LMB-drag the arrow until the bottom of the tires go just above the environment. Deselect Transform and Shift+RMB-click to deselect the model.

Let's now prepare for the final task of rendering. Deselect Headlight in the toolbar, if it was selected. This is a default light that won't be needed now. Position the model for rendering.

Select Raytracing and Antialias from the toolbar. Raytracing calculates reflections, refractions, and light-based shadows. Antialias smooths edges and improves the model's appearance.

Select Render from the QuickActions Bar. In the File Output Render Settings tab, change Image Size Presets to HD 1080. In the General Settings tab, set Adaptive Sampling to Ultra High Quality for a production-level rendering. Click Render to name the image and specify the location, then click Save. The render may take several minutes.

Navigate to the image and view your render. Then, finally, go to File > Save As and save your work. The native format for VRED is VPB.