Skydome for VW11, how does it work?

[Kevin]

I downloaded the Skydome from Vectordepot but have no idea of how to install and use it. It is for VW10 and I am on 11. Does anyone know where to put this and how to use it?

[Dave Donley]

Hello Kevin:

The Skydome lights symbol is just a hemisphere of directional lights contained in a symbol. You insert it into the drawing like any other symbol. You can adjust the brightness of it with the Object Info palette's brightness multiplier slider. I think the one on VectorDepot is a bit bright.

The lights are intended to provide the light you would get in the real world from the sky, which is lighting things from a hemisphere overhead. Overhangs, nooks, etc. will not "see" as much of this light and so you get nice darkening of those areas, increasing the feeling of depth. Areas in shadow (not lit by the sun) or areas in partial shadow from the sun are most improved.

You should try rendering your model both with mapped shadows and with ray-traced shadows to see which is faster for your model. I have seen both types be faster with different models.

Note that this is not appropriate for interiors, only for external views of buildings, or other external views of "objects". Also, the resolution is too low for shadows of trees and things close to the building - if you get a lot of banding try using mapped shadows instead of raytraced.

Good luck!