Environment

Environment

The environment is what the world looks like from inside your render — and on jewelry it matters more than anywhere else, because polished metal is a mirror: what a ring mostly shows is not its own color but the environment reflected in it. A good HDRI studio environment is the difference between gold that looks like gold and gold that looks like yellow plastic.

The Environments panel manages the environments in the document: which one lights the scene as skylight, which one drives reflections and refractions, and which one shows as the 360° background. One environment can play all three roles, or you can split them — a bright studio for the reflections, a plain color for the backdrop.

Creating and importing

• Add Environment — create a new one: a Basic environment (color or image with projection controls), or pick from More Types in the content type browser.
• Import from file — load a saved .renv file, which is how environments travel between models and between people.
• Choose existing — duplicate an environment in the document to use as a starting point.
• The search box filters by name, notes or tags when the list grows.

Reading the thumbnails

Small icons on the corner of each thumbnail tell you the environment’s role in the scene: used for reflection/refraction, used as the skylight, used as the 360° background — or flagged when its image file is missing (save with Save textures enabled to embed images in the .3dm and avoid that).

The full reference for every environment setting is in the Rhino help.