Overview

AutoCAD has a set of tools for improving the realism of renderings. These tools include objects that you can add to renderings for representing such things as trees and shrubs, which enable you to emphasize distance by making far objects hazy.

This chapter

• explains how to insert realistic bitmap images of trees, shrubs, people, and so forth in renderings;

• tells you how to enhance the illusion of distance in renderings by making far objects hazy.

In addition to tools for incorporating lights and materials in renderings, AutoCAD's Renderer contains tools for adding external objects to renderings. If, for instance, you want to have a tree within a rendering, you don't need to construct a 3D tree; instead, you can insert an external object that looks like a tree.

Often, these external objects represent trees and shrubs, and therefore, they are generally referred to as landscape objects. Despite the name, however, the objects also can represent people, automobiles, signs, and so forth. They are based on bitmap images from photographs of real objects. All you need is a suitable pair of images. (As explained later in this chapter, two bitmap images are needed for each object.)

These landscape objects are comparable to cardboard cutouts used in a department store window or as scenery in a stage play in that they are 2D surfaces with an image that resembles a 3D object. Nevertheless, they are able to cast shadows, just as if they were 3D objects. Furthermore, you can have...