There’s a very useful tool hidden within the texture and background editing dialogues: the Adjust Map dialog. It can often save us a trip to Photoshop, and is a great tool for tweaking the mood of a scene by editing Light Domes.
We can find the Adjust… button in:
The Environment>Lights palette
The Image Map windows
When we click on the Adjust… button we are presented with an image adjustment dialog, not unlike some Photoshop functions we know.
The Adjustments Dialog invoked from an Image Map window
The Adjustments dialog invoked from the Lights panel
The difference between the two panels is that the first panel floats on top of the image map. The second panel is invoked from the Lights panel so it needs to show the image map.
The parameters we can control here are:
- Hue
- Controls the image hue
- Saturation
- Controls the saturation (color intensity) of the image
- Black Point
- Sets the black point of the image
- Brightness
- Controls the overall brightness of the image
We will use a simple scene lit by a lightdome to show the differences obtained by modifying the map.
The Lightdome, unmodified
Hue modification
Saturation increased
Black point: 50%
Brightness decreased. Notice that modifying the black point results in more contrasted maps than modifying the brightness
As you can see, this dialog can be used to set the mood of a scene and/or do quick edits to our maps, saving us a trip to Photoshop or resetting the lighting of the scene.
