SECTION 2 - Modeling and Detail Editor

Adding complexity.

While the above provides a distinct improvement over the basic quickrender, the image still has a somewhat unreal look. There are no shadows. All the shading is very simple. The brightest surfaces in the scene are as bright as if they were lights themselves. There are quite a few ways to make the scene a bit more realistic.

The first step is to replace the quickrender light. While its Preferences setting of 255 intensity may be decreased and so avoid extremely bright surfaces, the quickrender light cannot cast shadows. Because it's a point source, the shading will not have the subtlety that real lights have because they're not point sources. A replacement light should then not be a single source. There should be several lights whose intensities sum less than 255 and which are separated by a five to ten degrees. At least one should be set to cast shadows.

TIP: Modifying shadow intensity

TIP: If one sets a light to cast shadows in Imagine, any area behind an object will be completely dark. There are two ways to lessen this effect. One may place other lights around the scene to fill in the shadow. There may be times when this is not desirable. If one wants light coming from only one direction, but wishes to lessen the shadow, create two lights at the same place. Both should be half the desired intensity, but only one should cast shadows. This way, the non shadowing light will pass right through any objects, and lessen the depth of the shadow.

Just as the key light was broken up, break the fill light into several lesser components. The fill lights should be more widely dispersed than the key lights. Instead of keeping a white or grey light, making all or some of the fill have a bit of color can help to suggest that it's being reflected from elements in the environment. Making them have "diminishing intensity" will increase the sense of direction as shading drops off more rapidly under their influence.

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