Customize the background

Tools: Surroundings

You can choose to apply a color, physical sky or bitmap to the background. The program also uses this background when rendering images.

To choose the background of viewports

1. Click Surroundings (How).
   

   Activate Surroundings in one of the following ways:

   • Actionbar:Role Draft Task Visualization Task area Surfaces, Light

   • Shortcut menu: Hovering over the empty workspace Right mouse button
   • Menu bar: Change Presentation Animation

   • Palette: Tools Change area in the following modules:

   Animation

   The Surroundings palette opens.

2. If you want to select the background color, do the following:
   • Go to the Background - Type area and select Color.
   • Select the new background color in the Color palette and click OK to confirm.

   Or:

   If you want to use the Physical sky for the background, do the following:

   • Go to the Background - Type area and select Physical sky.
     The program also considers the settings for Position of sun, Position of north, and Location.

   Or:

   If you want to display a bitmap in the background, do the following:

   • Go to the Background area and change the Type to Custom.
   • Select a bitmap for the Texture.
   • Specify the mapping type:
     The Plane option is well suited for background photos; the Sphere option is ideally suited for sky textures. The Cube option means that bitmaps which are cube nets can be correctly mapped as a panorama on the "celestial globe".

     Tip: If you use a background photo, you can define the settings in the Position of sun / north area so that the sun matches the shadows in the bitmap.

     You can immediately see the effects of the settings in the Surroundings palette.

3. Click Close.