3ds Max 9 Bible

Creating the right environment can add lots of realism to any rendered scene. Using the Environment and Effects dialog box, you can work with atmospheric effects. Atmospheric effects include Fire, Fog, Volume Fog, and Volume Light.

Render effects are useful because they enable you to create effects and update them interactively. This gives a level of control that was previously unavailable. This chapter explained how to use render elements and render effects and described the various types.

This chapter covered these topics:

• Creating Atmospheric Apparatus gizmos for positioning atmospheric effects

• Working with the Fire atmospheric effects

• Creating fog and volume fog effects

• Applying render effects

• Using the Lens Effects to create glows, rays, and stars

• Working with the remaining render effects to control brightness and contrast, film grain, blurs, and more

The next chapter delves into one of the advanced topics of 3D graphics-raytracing. It also covers the amazing mental ray rendering engine.