Environment

Click the left-hand toolbar button to hide/show the environment panel.

The panel allows you to set the global properties of the scene:

• The background

• The grid (optional)

• The light

Background

This value can be:

• Single color This is the default. In this case, the background of the scene is uniform. The color can be chosen using the color selector.

• Double color In this case, the background of the scene is drawn using two colors to define the color gradient. The colors can be chosen using the top and bottom color selectors.

• Sky The Sky option is a method of creating background images (sky, mountains…). It creates realistic 3D surroundings. It always remains stationary with the respect to the eye position so that the sky and other distant objects are always very far away no matter how the camera is moved and rotated. A predefined background image can be selected using the property sky name.

Grid

Turn on the grid option to display a squared grid in the scene. The grid is in the XY plane of the world coordinate system.

The Size is the side of the square that represents the grid.

The Step defines the number of grid lines that are displayed. There are always lines to show the (y=0,z=0) and the (x=0,z=0) points. Then depending on the value of the step, the size of the grid may increase.

You can set the Color of the grid.

If you can activate the floor option, it fills the grid with a darker color than the grid color.

Light

These properties allow you to modify the light of the scene and how the objects are illuminated.

When headlight is activated, the light always comes from behind your point of view for all cameras.

To define a custom direction from which the light comes, turn off the headlight option. Then set the azimuth angle (around the Z axis) in the range [-180; 180[ and the elevation angle (around Y axis) in the range [-90; 90].

Figure 2: Headlight mode

Figure 3: Custom light mode