You can flatten the floor of a spherical environment in scenes to improve the look of models that naturally rest on the ground or flat floors, particularly when performing view manipulations such as rotate or zoom.
If the model is too large or too small relative to something in the environment, you can adjust the environment size and scale the environment relative to the size of the model.
You can adjust the horizon height, essentially, from the equator down to the South pole. Imagine if the HDRI sphere scene is on the ocean. If you position the camera at a height, such that the horizon is in the middle of the image, then you can adjust the horizon height to line up with the horizon line. In this case, the gum drop is, essentially, a hemisphere.
If you position the camera very high from the surface of the ocean, then the horizon is toward the bottom of the image and you can adjust the horizon height to line up with the horizon line. In this case, the gum drop is like a sphere with a flat surface on one side that lines up with the floor.
To flatten floors in scenes:
- From the DisplayManager, click View Scene, Lights, and Cameras
.
- Right-click Scene and select Edit Scene.
- Under Background, select Use Environment.
You must select Use Environment to use the flatten floor option.
- Under Floor, click Flatten floor.
- Set the Environment size to specify the size of the HDRI scene sphere, the gum drop, that surrounds the model.
- Set the Horizon Height to specify at what lattitude on the HDRI scene sphere the floor starts to flatten.
- Click
.The Flatten floor option works best for environments that have a natural horizon line near the equator of the spherical environment image. These tend to be exterior environments. The Presentation Scenes folder now includes 10 new scenes which work well with the flatten ground control.