Knowledge Base

Article Number: 35 | VC5 | VC4 | VC3 | Post Date: April 29, 2017 | Last Updated: June 12, 2021

When I render my scenes, the frames seem dark for some reason. Is it possible to increase the brightness of my rendered frames? 

Below we show two methods for increasing scene brightness.

Method 1 | VC5 and vc4 Users | use environment menu options

In Virtual CRASH 5 and 4, environment lighting conditions can easily be specified in the “environment” menu.

Note, to access the environment menu, ensure that no objects are actively selected in the project. To deselect objects, simply right-click on their names in the project menu. See the User's Guide (VC5 | VC4) to learn more about environment lighting settings.

Method 2 | VC3 Users | modify shader file

If you are a Virtual CRASH 3 user, it is possible to increase the ambient lighting of your scene by modifying the shader file “default.shd”. Before continuing on, first see the Blog post: www.vcrashusa.com/blog/2016/9/26/customize-your-sky to learn how to access the shader file and make customizations. This post also includes tips for creating a nighttime sky. 

With your favorite text editor, open default.shd, and increase the values for AMBIENT.

By default the three values for red, green, and blue lighting are set to 0.2, 0.2, and 0.2 as shown below. 

Rendering our scene in Direct Light with these default values, we obtain the following:

Changing the AMBIENT values from 0.2, 0.2, 0.2 to 0.5, 0.5, 0.5 as shown below:

results in the following:

Further increasing to 1.0, 1.0, 1.0, we obtain:

For 2.0, 2.0, 2.0, we obtain:

Finally, for 5.0, 5.0, 5.0, we have:

We can also reduce the value lower than 0.2. For 0.0, 0.0, 0.0, we have:

Tags: increasing light, light, dark, turn up light, brighter, darker, nighttime, brightness, darkness, ambient lighting, scene lighting.

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