News

Lighting in Boxshot

18 Feb 2013

I would like to share the current progress with you. The upcoming release of Boxshot 4 brings some changes in the lighting and materials that you will probably find useful. Sounds interesting?

Left or Right?

Look at the picture below. Which box looks better - left or right?

I bet most of you choose the left one. Yep, that’s how it was in Box Shot 3D. The right one is how it works in Boxshot 4. The fun part is that the right one is more physically correct, as when you lit something with the omni light, you get gradient lighting on the floor, as brightness depends on the angle of the light (lots of math).

So What?

So what we’ve done is we’ve added some checkboxes that revert the good old behavior for those, who needs this. More, we’ve turned the feature on by default, so you get your beloved incorrect images, out of the box :)

This works only when you add light sources to scene, as ambient lighting works the same in all directions. Here is the scene with just a cylinder and a light source. Notice the highlighted checkbox is on (the default and the only behavior in the current Boxshot 4) and see the gradient on the floor. You can do the same with your version of Boxshot easily.

Here is the same scene with the checkbox turned off (the new default behavior of the upcoming release). The floor now doesn’t care where the light comes from and just cares about its amount.

Feel the difference :)

Easy Lighting

Another new feature will ease up your life a bit. It is located in the Tools menu and called “Easy Lighting”. Let’s create a new scene and add a software box there. Like this:

Now click the “Easy lighting” item in the menu. You will see a window and if you move it aside, you’ll see the changes in the scene:

Yep, it is the lighting from Box Shot 3D. Instead of dragging light with gizmo, you move it by changing the angles it comes from. Preview is not 100% correct, but if you do the rendering, you’ll see it works pretty well.

I would like to mention that this feature does nothing new. You can do the same by adjusting the light position, intensity and ambient lighting level. The new tool just makes everything easier and faster. Hope you’ll love it.

When?

We’re doing our best to release it by the end of the month. Maybe a little bit later, but not too much. Stay tuned.

P.S.

Of course that’s not all the new stuff :)