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The First Day Engine (short FDE) is a landscape rendering module that lets you visualize your heightmaps and textures in the "real world". You can also utilize it to render spherical and cubic environment maps (i.e. backdrops) for usage in 3D applications and video games. The interface of the FDE consists of three pages: |
3. Output parameters like the image dimensions, but also scene attributes like the appearance of the sky (including clouds), are controlled at the Scene Setup / Render page.
The Clouds are adjusted with four parameters:
Density: This defines the percentage of the sky, that is covered by cloud particles. The clouds are hardly visible at values below 50. The optimal range is located between 60 and 80. Sharpness: Adjusts the contrast between the clear sky and the clouds. Low values result in gentle fog, high values in solid objects. Detail: Due to the rendering complexity of the clouds, this parameter is used to balance between the quality of the clouds and the time that you have to wait for the image to finish. Cirrus Clouds Density: This is for the clouds, which are located in the high layers of the sky.
Terrain and sky are illuminated by the sun. The brightness of the sun and its tint are adjusted with the Sun Light Color. Ambient light is a constant illumination that is independent of shadows and adds to the scene. The Ambient Color option controls its shade and intensity.
You can add stars for night scenes by increasing the Stars Brightness value.
Atmosphere effects are crucial for the image to look realistic. The Haze Color and Density parameters control the effect of water in the air, which makes distant objects appear indistinct. Distant terrain is blended to the Haze Color.
The light scattering effect, which makes the sky and distant objects blue is adjusted with the Sky Color and Atmosphere Blue Strength value.
There's also a reddening effect, which allows orange sunsets and pink sunrises. Its intensity is controlled by the Atmosphere Red Strength parameter.
The Water Tint is some kind of colored fog in the water, which replaces the ground in the deeper water. The intensity of this fog is regulated with the Water Tint Density value.
At the Rendering Settings panel, the output image parameters like Width and Height can be adjusted. The Antialiasing value increases the quality of the image by smoothing edges and improving the texture filtering. Because more rays have to be calculated per image pixel, the rendering times increase quadratic to the antialiasing value. The Random Seed value influences the appearance of random objects like the clouds and the water. Each value e.g. defines an unique clouds pattern. For special purposes, the rendering of the Sun, the Land and the Sky can be disabled. If you enable the Render Alpha Channel option, the rendered image will feature no colors but only the transparency values of the scene. This is useful if you plan later modifications in other image processing software.
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