Chapter 23: On a Render Bender 535

If you don’t want to create a named view first, enter the BACKGROUND command at the command line to display the Background dialog box.

Rendering a 3D Model

After you add lights, apply materials, and define a background for your 3D model, you’re ready to press the magic button! Clicking Render tells AutoCAD to round up all the materials and apply them to the objects and faces to which they’re assigned. After materials are assigned, the background is applied to the current viewport, and then finally AutoCAD calculates light and shadows based on all those property settings you made earlier in the chapter.

By default, rendering is performed in the Render Window (see Figure 23-14). To start rendering your virtual fat into digital lard (and how’s that for a grisly image?), click Render on the Render tab’s Render panel (another offering from the Department of Redundancy Department).

To help make rendering as easy as possible, AutoCAD comes with five render presets. A render preset is a configuration of rendering settings that you can use to get predictable results when rendering a model. The presets range in quality of output, from Draft through Low, Medium, and High to Presentation quality.

Figure 23-14: Rendering a rendering in the Render Window.

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536 Part V: On a 3D Spree

To set a render preset current, choose the Render Presets drop-down on the Render tab’s Render panel. Choose Manage Render Presets at the bottom of the Render Presets drop-down to open the Render Presets Manager dialog box. The Render Presets Manager allows you to create and edit custom render presets. You can start with an existing render preset when you create a new one.

If the render presets don’t seem to offer the look you’re striving for, you can experiment with the Advanced Render Settings palette (see Figure 23-15). When you get the settings you like, you can save them to a render preset.

Figure 23-15: The Advanced Render Settings palette gives you control over all the settings of the rendering process.

In addition to rendering a still image with the RENDER or RENDERCROP commands, you can create an animated walk-through of your model by using the ANIPATH. To find out more about creating animations, see the AutoCAD online help system.

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Part VI

The Part of Tens

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Tens sounds a lot like tense, and tense is how AutoCAD may make you feel sometimes. Tens

also may remind you of the metric system, and if you’re not used to it, that may also make you feel tense. But never fear — help is on the way! A top ten list is a good way to quickly point out the best — or the worst — of almost anything, AutoCAD included. This Part of Tens features lists that help you understand some of the nuts and bolts that make AutoCAD work, figure out whether you should be using AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT, and hunt for the most valuable AutoCAD resources.

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