Inside AutoCAD® 2002

Types of Rendering Supported by AutoCAD

AutoCAD 2002 incorporates a full-featured rendering engine that is capable of producing rendering ranging from simple shaded models to full photo-realistic renderings. Generally, three types, or levels, of rendering are offered by the rendering facility inside AutoCAD 2002:

• Render

• Photo Real

• Photo Raytrace

These three different types of rendering produce increasingly more realistic outputs, of which Photo Raytrace is the most realistic. You pay a price for realism, however: Increased realism requires increased rendering times.

The line of demarcation between shading and rendering is somewhat arbitrary. The shading modes available with the SHADEMODE command (discussed in Chapter 27, “Introduction to 3D”) ...