Visualization

The following enhancements are made to visualization tools.

Exporting to LumenRT for Real Time Rendering

Exporting a DGN model to LumenRT software gives you the flexibility of using the powerful features of LumenRT for visualizing your design in real time. LumenRT transforms CAD/CG/GIS models into real-time 3D immersive scenes called LiveCubes™. LiveCubes are completely self-contained 3D environments that allow authors to place their models into a rich environmental context complete with plants, trees, terrains, water, skies, clouds, characters, and vehicles.

You can also attach VISSIM traffic simulations to the DGN file while exporting to LumenRT. Such exported files will display the traffic simulation in LumenRT.

Render and Environment Setup in Explorer and Properties Dialog

You can now find render setups and environment setups, which are available for current dgn file, under the Render Setups and Environment Setups entries as sub-nodes in the File tab of the Explorer dialog. To modify and edit their settings, select Properties from the reset pop-up menu of that render or environment setup.

Lights in Explorer and Properties Dialog

If source lights are placed in your model, you can find those lights under Models > Current model > Elements > Lights in the File tab of the Explorer dialog. To modify and edit the light settings, in Explorer, select Properties from the reset pop-up menu of the light.

Selecting Elements by Material

The Element Selection tool now has the option to select elements by material.

Editable Luxology Assets

Materials created from Luxology files (.lxp) can now be edited.

Render Settings

The following render settings are added in the Luxology Render Setup Manager dialog:

Maximum Radiance - Controls the maximum radiance carried by a light ray. This can be helpful in reducing noise and preventing "fireflies" (single bright pixels) caused by small but very bright features of a scene, such as tight specular highlights or surfaces very close to point light sources. Setting Maximum Radiance to '0' (the default) means that a ray can carry unlimited radiance.
Direct Light MIS (Multiple Importance Sampling) - Multiple Importance Sampling intelligently samples direct lighting for both specular and diffuse shading, greatly reducing noise without a significant increase in render time. Options are Both, Specular Only, Diffuse Only or None.
Direct Light Samples - Sets the total number of samples generated for all lights in a given scene.
Environment Importance Sampling - If on, takes into account the brightness of HDR images used for image based lighting. Brighter areas of the image have a greater effect on the lighting result, so when enabled, samples concentrate around these brighter areas producing a more accurate, smoother result with fewer IC rays, which means faster rendering.
Environment Importance Samples - Sets the number of samples taken of the environment used for global illumination. More the number of samples, higher is the accuracy of the render output, but at the cost of increased render time.

Ability to Rename Multiple Lights

You can now rename multiple source lights at once in the Light Manager dialog.