Environment settings and presets

The ENVIRONMENT BROWSER holds the sky, clouds, night sky, sun, ground plane, wind, fog and background picture of a scene, along with the presets that set all of them in one click. Open it from the ENVIRONMENT card at the bottom right of the window, with ⌘E or with the ENVIRONMENT BROWSER command in the command palette. The presets are on the left side of the panel. On the right are a preview, the settings in the order used below and the buttons at the foot.

Each change goes into the scene as you make it, and a slider drag is one undo step. The panel has no APPLY or CANCEL; its X only closes it. The environment is saved with the scene. Where a section has an ENABLED switch, turning it off dims the rows below it and keeps their values. For the tasks these settings serve, see Set the sky, sun, fog and clouds.

#Preset list

A preset saved this way is a .orbitenv file. Renaming, moving, deleting and importing presets are covered in Save your own presets.

#Preview and name

At the top of the right side, a chrome sphere shows the environment with its reflections and fog. It is redrawn shortly after the last change.

Under the sphere is the name of the environment. A built-in preset shows its name in capitals and a roll shows CUSTOM. A user preset shows its name in a field, where typing a new name and pressing Return renames the preset. EDITS UPDATE THIS PRESET below the field means that each change in the panel is also written into that preset's file.

#Sky

While the Void preset is applied, the sky stays black whatever these settings say. Another preset, ROLL or SAVE AS PRESET ends that.

#Clouds

Clouds cover the stars. The sun and the moon are drawn in front of them. With wind in the scene, the clouds drift while Loop Studio plays and in exported loops.

#Night

STARS and MOON each have their own switch, and the rows under a switch are dimmed while it is off.

The panel has no control for where the stars fall. A roll that gives a night sky scatters them again. The moon gives the scene no light. To light a night scene, follow Make a night sky.

#Sun

The sun has two switches. VISIBLE SUN DISC draws it in the sky, and SUN LIGHT makes it light the scene. Either works without the other, and AZIMUTH and ELEVATION place both.

Three groups under DISC, INNER HALO and OUTER CORONA shape the drawn sun. All three are dimmed while VISIBLE SUN DISC is off.

The sunlight takes the disc COLOR, which is dimmed with the rest of the group while VISIBLE SUN DISC is off. To change the color of the light, turn the disc on, set the color and turn the disc off again. The sunlight always casts shadows. They show in the LIVE preview and in renders, since the viewport draws none. Light a scene covers the lights you place yourself.

#Ground plane

In the viewport the floor reflects only the sky. Objects appear in its reflection in the LIVE preview and in renders, for the reasons in The viewport, the preview and the render.

#Wind

The section has no ENABLED switch; a STRENGTH of 0 turns the wind off. Plants lean away from the wind, and water with FOLLOW WIND on takes its direction from DIRECTION. The swaying of plants and the drift of glowing motes, clouds and the banks of LAYERED fog happen while Loop Studio plays and in exported loops. See Make things move in the wind.

#Fog

The rows below ENABLED are dimmed while fog is off. The rows each MODE shows are marked in the last column; the others are hidden.

When fog is off, choosing the TERRA '96 look in RENDER SETTINGS shows TERRA PAIRS WITH FOG with an ENABLE button, described in Render settings. ENABLE turns fog on in LAYERED mode with COLOR #8C9EB8, DENSITY 0.02, START DIST 0 m, BASE HEIGHT 0 m, SCALE HEIGHT 4.00 m, NOISE AMOUNT 0 and NOISE SCALE 0.15, and leaves END DIST and MAX AMOUNT as they were.

#Background

The picture appears only where the camera looks past the objects. Shiny objects still reflect the sky, and the scene is still lit by it. Saving the scene stores a copy of the picture in the file, reduced to 1024 pixels on its longest side if it is larger. Under the file name, EMBEDDED means Orbit is using that stored copy because the original file cannot be found, and MISSING · USING SKY means neither is available and the sky shows in its place.

#Footer

#Built-in environments

A card replaces the whole environment. It turns off the ground plane, fog, wind and background picture and returns each setting it does not list below to its default. None of the cards turns on SUN LIGHT. Card names appear as written here; the name under the preview shows them in capitals.

The two angles of a sun disc are its AZIMUTH and ELEVATION.

#Roll

ROLL picks one of seven moods at random, each about as likely as the others, and then chooses every setting within that mood's limits. Sometimes one part of a roll, such as the cloud colors, strays further from the mood. A roll turns off the ground plane and the background picture and sets a random wind DIRECTION. The moods have no names in the panel.

Every roll turns on SUN LIGHT, so a rolled night scene is lit by a dim light that stands in for the moon. Rolled fog has a MAX AMOUNT of 0.90 and takes a paler version of the rolled BOTTOM color. A roll is not a preset until it is saved with SAVE AS PRESET or + NEW PRESET.

Related: Set the sky, sun, fog and clouds, Make a night sky, Make things move in the wind and Save your own presets.