MICROSTATION RENDERING: LUXOLOGY

The Basics

In order to produce a quick, high-quality rendered image in MicroStation, you should follow the steps below. In all cases, the more time you spend tweaking the settings, the better the results will be. However, a number of defaults are provided to help.

Open the Luxology Render dialog from the Visualisation workflow > Rendering tab > Render Scene (D 1).

Select the Lighting Setup

Light Setups define the global (Ambient, Flashbulb, Solar and Sky Dome) and source (Spot, Area, Directional, Sky) lights for your rendering.

Clicking on the arrow will allow you to select the lighting setups stored in your dgn file.

Clicking on the icon will open the Light Manager.

Note: It is not possible to use Light Setups from dgnlibs, nor is it possible to import/export settings. The only way to create lighting settings is to start from scratch or create them in a seed file.

The Light Setup will be confirmed across the top of the Luxology Render dialog.

Select the Environment

An Environment provides additional effects (indirect lighting, illumination, etc) without having to model the complete surroundings.

The Environment will be confirmed across the top of the Luxology window.

Select the Rendering Set-up

There are a series of Rendering Setups pre-defined in MicroStation. These provide you with correct settings that you need for most rendering tasks.

Exterior GOOD

Suitable for normal elevations. The settings are optimised for full renderings to be used in meetings and reviews at most scales.

Shadows = Per light (uses the settings from each light source)

Reflections = On, depth 2

Transparency = On, depth 100

Antialias Quality = Medium

Global Illumination = On

Render Visible Edges

Ticking the option for Render Visible Edges:

Turn visible edges on/off here:

The display settings (colour) are controlled from the Image Settings menu:

Ambient occlusion

Suitable for simple, colourless “foam board style” soft shadow images.

Shadows = Per light (uses the settings from each light source)

Reflections = On, depth 2 (will not affect the image)

Transparency = On, depth 100 (will not affect the image)

Antialias Quality = Medium

Global Illumination = On

View and size

The higher the image size, the greater the impact will be on your processors, and the longer it will take to create the image. Keep the X and Y values to a relatively small onscreen preview size (800 x 600for example) until you are ready for the final render.

Render

To render your image, click the Render button.

Saving the final image

Once the preview is satisfactory, the image size should be set to the correct resolution. There is a user preference to control this, found in File > Settings > User > Preferences > Render > Units. This can be used to set the DPI and units (mm) for an exact sized image. However, as switching between preferences requires jumping in and out the modelling environment, an exact image size can be calculated using:

Final image height in mm / 25.4 x Required DPI = Y pixel setting

e.g. 297 (for an A3 landscape) / 25.4 x 300 dpi = 3507

Save the image to the required format: