When working in the Inventor part or assembly environment you will notice the way that the components are lit up (or down). Now where are these lights coming from and how do we control this.
Autodesk Inventor uses Image Based Lighting or IBL to depict the way that you see your parts and assemblies. The IBL environments that are available out the box are the following.
- Cool Light
- Country Road – SphereonVR
- Dark Sky
- Desert Dawn Road
- Dry Salt Bed
- Empty Lab
- Grey Room
- Grid Light
- Infinity Pool
- Old Warehouse
- Photo Booth
- Plain Room
- Rim Highlights
- Soft Light
- Stuttgart Courtyard
- The Alps
- Tranquility Blue
In addition to IBL you also have the old school lighting that Inventor utilised before the introduction of IBL.
- Default Lights
- One Light
- Two Lights
In the environment tab, you can either display the IBL image in the background or just have the lights show on your part or assembly. The exposure (brightness) , rotation as well as the scale of the IBL can be adjusted on the environment tab.
The Lighting tab controls the old way of Inventor with the 4 lights available to be switched on or off. You can also change the colour of the lights individually as well as adjust the brightness. At the bottom you have a global setting for all the lights for ambience and brightness.
The final tab controls the way the shadows and direction the lights enters the environment to cast those shadows. For ground and object shadows you also have control of the density as well as softness and the ambient shadows that get cast.
