This chapter includes all commands and concepts related to rendering and lighting. Rendering allows us to obtain photorealistic images from our 3D scene.

General concepts and a typical workflow were presented, followed by the RENDER command, the main command to render, and also save the render image. Other related commands are: RENDERWIN to display the render windows; RENDERCROP to render just some part of the viewport, and is useful for testing; SAVEIMG to save a rendered image in viewport; RPREF to specify all default parameters used for rendering, including activation of global illumination and final gather; and RENDERPRESETS to create rendering presets.

We then introduced illumination, starting with default, generic, and photometric lighting. To apply the natural lighting of the Sun, there is the SUNPROPERTIES command, which can also consider sky lighting and background. GEOGRAPHICLOCATION specifies the location and the north direction. There are several commands to apply artificial lighting: POINTLIGHT to create point lights, SPOTLIGHT to create spot lights, DISTANTLIGHT to simulate lights that are far away and project parallel rays, and WEBLIGHT to consider web lights coming from IES files. To manage lights, we apply the LIGHTLIST command. When using photometric lighting, the RENDEREXPOSURE command allows us to control the exposure. Finally, when opening scenes from versions prior to 2007, the CONVERTOLDLIGHTS command converts these old lights.

In the next chapter we will explore materials and effects.