The render light objects are in the Light Source class, so make this visible.

As soon as you turn on a light object, Vectorworks assumes that you are rendering with intent, and turns off the default light source that is always over our left shoulder. Think of it as turning off the work lights.

Switching to Renderworks, note that lights appear more realistic and a little dimmer. We also see the fluorescent tube's light. Because this light is a custom shape, we only see it in Renderworks.

The lights all appear to have sightly different hues. More on that later.

Switch back to OpenGL

Open View>Set Lighting Options...

Set the Brightness in the Ambient section to 0%

The Ambient setting essentially sets the black point for any unlit surfaces.

See more about Lighting Options here

Now set the level to 50%

There are some more sophisticated ways to set ambient light, but as a rule of thumb, use 50% for interior scenes and 35% for exterior scenes.

Switch to the Lighting Samples sheet layer.

The sheet has a viewport with our scene. Select it, and press the Update button in Object Info.

Each viewport can hold its own render and lighting settings. This one has ambient light at 0%

Hint: Viewports at a smaller scale and / or a lower resolution are a great way to test lighting and render settings before committing to a fill render. You can even set the sheet to render below screen resolution, for example 35 DPI.

Make two copies of the viewport to its right. I recommend using option/control-drag or the Move By Points tool.

Select the middle viewport, and click on Lighting Options… in Object Info.

Set the ambient level to 50% and update the render.

We can see that the black areas are now gray. The render looks a little hazy and unrealistic.

Select the third viewport and open its Lighting Options.

Turn on Ambient occlusion, and update the render.

Ambient occlusion simulates the natural shading of corners and intersections, where ambient light is less likely to reach. If you look at the corner of your actual room, you can see ambient occlusion in real life. Ambient occlusion only simulates the effect, so is very fast and adds a fair amount of realism to a previously unacceptable render.

Duplicate the row of viewports downward, and change the rendering to Final Quality Renderworks.

Without ambient light, the quality is significantly better than the same settings in OpenGL. We also have indirect lighting set to on here, so light becomes ambient when it bounces into the space.

Ambient occlusion is effective in Renderworks as well.

The interface for turning on Ambient Occlusion has a bit of a bug: you can only edit the setting if Ambient lighting is on, however, you do NOT need ambient lighting to be on to use ambient occlusion.

In this case, turn Ambient lighting on, turn on Ambient Occlusion, and then turn it back off.

In the next viewport, turn on Ambient lighting.

Again, the scene is less black, but is a little washed out.

Turning on Ambient occlusion really helps.

Copy this viewport to the right.

Let's look at another way to add ambient lighting. Turn off ambient light, and set Environment Lighting to From Selected Background. Set the Background to HDRI White

This setting used a High Dynamic Range Image as a light source, essentially making the image into a spherical light box surrounding our virtual environment. This gives us a little more control over the ambient light.

Turning off Ambient Occlusion, we can see that the render engine is actually calculating ambient occlusion in the corners.

Environmental lighting really relies on indirect lighting. The fewer bounces, the garner the image (like using a high ISO film). More on that in the next section.

With HDRI environmental lighting, we are not limited to a single color or distribution, so we can simulate everything from the reflection of an evening sky to the glow of an orchestra pit.

Duplicate the viewport in the next row to the right so that you have five total.

Indirect lighting allows surfaces to receive light that bounces off of other surfaces. This can add significantly to render times, however the end result is more realistic.

The effect of indirect lighting depends on the size, shape, and materials in your space.

This viewport has no bounces, so the light from the HDRI background is fairly grainy.

Set the next viewport's lighting options to 2 bounces. This mode also triggers the screen to render in sections, so this setting is ideal if you're trying to view indirect lighting in rendered Design Layers.

Set the next viewport to three bounces.

Four bounces is the standard for interior scenes, and the calculated ambient occlusion is starting to look fairly natural.

By sixteen bounces, we start to get a little over exposed, especially for an unenclosed space.

In the next row, let's look at color temperature.

Color temperature refers to the color of white light on a spectrum of blue to neutral to amber.

We measure color temperature in degrees Kelvin of a heated black body the object. The more an object is heated, the bluer the light it emits becomes.

In Lighting Options, set the White Color Temperature to Custom, 2700. This sets the reference white of the image to 2700K, much like setting the white balance on a camera.

Our incandescent lamp in the corner produces light at 2700K, so it matches our paper white.

Our halogen R lamp is 3000K, so looks a little bluer in comparison. The 4100K fluorescent tube is much bluer.

In the next viewport, set the color temperature to Daylight (6500K). In comparison, our interior lights look much warmer. This is like looking at the warm interior of a house when you are outside at night.

In the last viewport, set the color temperature to custom, 1850K. This sets our reference white light to the color of candle light, and our lights look quite blue in comparison.

Click on Solar Animation… Use the time and date sliders to observe how the sun changes position over time.

This can be useful if you are trying to predict the effect of natural light on an indoor our outdoor environment.

Cancel out of the dialog, leaving the time at 2:45 PM

Update the first viewport in the next row. This has a camera inside the room.

We can see the shadow of the directional light coming through the window.

In the next viewport, turn on the Ceiling Layer and the Breakaway class.

Set the Background Render to Renderworks Style>Realistic Interior Final. Renderworks Styles are a group of saved render and lighting settings.

They are resources, so you can use the Resource Manager to edit and share styles.

Click on Lighting Options... in object info. Editing the style here will also make changes to the resource.

Because the space we have is small, change the Indirect Lighting to 4 Bounces and turn off Ambient lighting. Exit the dialog and update the render.

Notice that light from the Heliodon only comes through the window. Vectorworks detects whether a space is open or closed for directional lights and renders accordingly. Even if we placed the Heliodon inside the room, we would still only see the light enter through the window.

Duplicate the viewport to the right twice. We are going to look at camera effects on this copy.

Edit the viewport, either through the menu command or by double-clicking on the object, and choose Camera.

Vectorworks should select the Renderworks Camera setting the view for you. Find the Renderworks Camera Effects section towards the bottom of Object Info.

Enable Depth of Field. As with analog photography, the smaller the F-Stop, the larger the aperture and shorter the depth of field. Did you ever notice yourself squinting to see better? By reducing the scattered light entering our eye, we increase our depth of field, making focusing easier.

Set the F-Stop to f/4.0 and the Focus Distance to 15'6".

Set the shutter speed to 1/125.

Exit the camera and update the viewport. Changing the shutter speed lets us increase or reduce the amount of light in the scene without changing intensity settings.

In the final viewport, use the Visualization palette to turn off the three interior lights. You can really see the effects of indirect lighting,

You can start to see the power of indirect lighting, with reflected light naturally illuminating the room.

We have one more option to examine. At the bottom of Object Info, enable Apply Image Effects, and press the Image Effects… button.

Image effects are a bit like adjustment layers in Photoshop. They allow us to apply a transformation to the rendered image without importing it into an external editor. Because the transformations save with the viewport, any updates you make will automatically re-apply the transformations.

Unfortunately, you are limited to sliders to make adjustments

In the final row, observe what happens with bounces in an enclosed space. With zero bounces, only directly lit surfaces receive light.

Two bounces begins to reveal all surfaces and the corners of the space.

By 16 bounces, the overall light in the room becomes brighter.