In addition to the awesomely powerful mental ray renderer we added in AutoCAD 2007 we have added more control and features to allow you to create even more stunning renderings with AutoCAD 2008.
Photometric Lights
Photometric lights use “real-world” values for adjusting lighting. For example, if your scene requires you to use fixtures (luminaries) that contain a 75W bulb, you can select a bulb that is 75W from the tool palette. You can adjust the lamp intensity of the bulb in Candela, Lumen, or Lux units.
Luminaires
A luminary assembles a set of light objects into a light fixture. For example, you can create a set of lights to create a light over a dining area.
Sun and Sky
You can now simulate the effects of sunlight in your drawings by applying the new Sun and Sky background to a drawing view.
Procedural Maps:
Materials are improved with the addition of new procedural maps. You can even nest a procedural map within another procedural map.
Advanced Lighting Override
With advanced lighting override at the material level, you can adjust aspects of the light emission, reflectance, and color bleeding to produce even more realistically rendered images than if you relied strictly on the light sources illuminating a scene.
Preview realistic Materials
Any change to a material updates the preview swatch. You can see what the material “really looks like” before you do the final render.
And more.
OK well I need to pack for my Seattle trip in the morning. I will be entertainment for the PSAUG users group tomorrow night then presenting at the Seattle AUGI CAD Camp. Should be interesting without a laptop (got stolen last week) otherwise I will stand in front of everyone and describe my presentation and make shadow puppets. 🙂
Cheers,
Shaan
MentalRay? how can I use these renderer? I`ve been hearing about these but never seen it! Please if someone knows how to use it in autocad 2007 please tell me!
mentalray is the technology also known as the rendering engine in the RENDER of AutoCAD using the RENDER command. It is also the rendering engine for 3ds max and most Autodesk products. You render 3D objects with it.
Best Regards,
Shaan
That’s it Masaru, I’m also Seeking an answer to this problem, where can We find an appropiate information about AUTOCAD LIGHTS AND RENDERING.
THANKS FOR READING THIS!!
REGARDS!!
CARLOS: Drafter and 3D Cad modeler.
For learning how to Render in AutoCAD 2007+ which under the hood uses mentalray technology, look in the Help, search the web and Youtube, join AUGI, as there are many online training sources for this topic.
http://www.caddigest.com/subjects/autocad/tutorials/rendering.htm
http://wlecouteur.blogspot.com/2008/09/rendering-in-autocad-r2009.html
http://www.dailyautocad.com/category/render/
There are also some great books you can purchase on AutoiCAD and rendering.
Best Regards,
Shaan
Where might I find these books on rendering? I currently am using: AutoCAD 2008 Creating and Presenting 3D Models, Autodesk Official Training Courseware. I would like to learn more about lighting in particular, and this book only covers basics of point and spot lights. Thanks!
Kristy,
There are books that cover AutoCAD rendering in portions of their books like the ones from AutoCAD 2009 & AutoCAD LT 2009 Bible from Ellen Finkelstein, AutoCAD for Dummies by Lee Ambrosius, and Mastering AutoCAD by George Omura that contain tutorials and details on rendering in AutoCAD.
There are also some very advanced books on lighting and rendering theory of mentalray renderer which is the rendering engine of AutoCAD but that is way technical on topics you may never ever use unless writing shaders for the renderer.
In other replies to this post there are many resources and great tutorials on the blogs and web.
Autodesk also has a bunch of content like this free rendering in AutoCAD 2009 training with sample files. http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=10975906
Best Regards,
Shaan