We will use 2 lights in the centre that will light up the whole room, and on the way create some nice shadows. You can if you want to use your own light settings, and perhaps even Radiosity, but to speed up rendering a bit, I've chosen to use Area Lights only. Click the Lights button at the bottom of Layout to select it as current Item, then bring up the Properties Panel and use the following settings.

Picture 68: The Light settings

Note; you must change the Light into an Area Light before you can set an Intensity Falloff. We are going to clone this light once so select "Add -> Clone Current Item" and enter 1 in the requester that comes up. Now we have 2 lights with the same light settings. Open up the Properties Panel again and click the Global Illumination Button, set the Ambient Intensity to 0%, leave the other settings to the defaults and close down the Panels.

Now we will position these two lights, so use the following settings in the Position Window, and remember to create a keyframe after you've entered the values.

Create those keyframes!

We are going to rotate these lights to, so select the Rotate Tool and use the following settings in the Rotate Window.

Create those keyframes!

That's it for the lights; lets get on with the Camera settings.

Now we won't change very much here since we've already keyframed the camera for Frame 1. How many renders you want of the room is up to you, I rendered from 3 different positions. And remember that each time you move/rotate the camera, make sure you create a keyframe.

The Position and Rotation values I used for Frame 1 are the following.

If you view the Universe from the Camera now and with Textured Preview, it should look something like picture 69.

Picture 69: What the Camera sees now

Open up the Properties Panel for the Camera, then use the following settings.

Resolution: VGA (640x480) (More or less if you want to)
Width: 640
Height: 480
Pixel Aspect Ratio: 1.0
Zoom Factor: 2.0
AntiAliasing: Enhanced Medium (More or less if you want to)

Leave the other settings to the defaults and the Camera setup is finished.

Okay we're almost done, all we need to do now is set a few Rendering Options and then render this scene. Click the Rendering Button at the top left of Layout and select Rendering Options, then change to the following.

Render First Frame: 1
Render Last Frame: If you only choose to render 1 image, then enter "1" here.
Automatic Frame Advance: ON
Show Render Progress: OFF
Enable Viper: OFF
Render Display: None
Ray Trace Shadows: ON
Ray Trace Reflections: ON
Ray Trace Refractions: OFF
Extra Ray Trace Optimisation: 16

Output Files

Save RGB: ON
Type: JPG

Choose a Filename and you're ready to render. Close down the Rendering Options and then save this scene as "MansionScene.lwo". Now hit F10 to start rendering!

That's it! If you've come this far, and if the renders turn out good, then I wish to congratulate you! I hope you learned something from the tutorial and I wish to thank you for taking time in reading it. See picture 70 for one of the final renders.

If you ran across any bugs, or if you have any comments you can send them to: erik@mgfx.net