Interactive 3D Environment
A key element in the rapid acceptance of Autodesk® VIZ has been its ability to present a compelling visual environment. You can work quickly and get immediate, interactive feedback as you model forms and spaces and experiment with design elements. “Modeless” modeling provides a unified workspace, and surface finishes and lighting systems can be created, mapped, and manipulated on-the-fly.

Global Illumination Rendering

Designers appreciate the importance of light in defining the character of form and space. Yet light can be one of the most elusive elements to work with effectively. Autodesk VIZ 4 introduces a new generation of global illumination rendering technology for more accurately simulating lighting effects in a scene. This new technology significantly enhances the value of Autodesk VIZ throughout the design process by

• Producing more accurate renderings of what objects or spaces would look like in natural or artificial lighting conditions. This increased accuracy makes Autodesk VIZ 4 a better tool to validate and communicate your true design intent. It can reduce or eliminate the need for costly physical prototypes.
  
  
• Automatically capturing subtle lighting effects that add depth and realism to images. These effects—including indirect diffuse lighting, soft shadows from area light sources, and color bounce between surfaces—produce images and animations of unsurpassed realism for compelling presentations.
  
  
• Simplifying the workflow for designers who previously used both 3D Studio VIZ and Lightscape to obtain similar results.

Real-World Lighting

In conjunction with global illumination rendering, Autodesk VIZ 4 also introduces support for physically based lighting. Rather than specifying the intensity of a light using arbitrary values, you can now use more meaningful photometric units (i.e., lumens, candelas). Autodesk VIZ 4 also supports the industry-standard IES (Illuminating Engineering Society) data formats for describing the performance of manufactured lighting fixtures. You can obtain luminaire photometric data or even complete 3D luminaire models from manufacturer websites for use in your scenes. Autodesk VIZ 4 also comes with a ready-to-use library of common lighting fixtures.

Physically based lighting benefits you by making it significantly easier and more intuitive to set up the lighting in your scenes. In previous versions of the VIZ product line, designers had to become computer graphics specialists to produce natural-looking images. With Autodesk VIZ 4, you can get realistic results simply by positioning the lights in a scene the way you would in the real world. Autodesk VIZ 4 also supports IES daylight standards and offers an enhanced daylight system for defining natural lighting conditions by specifying location, date, time, and cloud cover conditions.

Physically based lighting also enables you to take advantage of new lighting analysis tools for evaluating specific lighting configurations in your scenes. This functionality provides even greater value from your digital models.

Unique, Intelligent Interoperability

Autodesk VIZ 4 offers an enhanced DWG Linking™ feature that provides unique interoperability with AutoCAD® platform-based solutions. This feature enables you to fully leverage the data created in your design platform (Autodesk® Architectural Desktop, Autodesk® Mechanical Desktop®, Autodesk® Land Desktop software). For example, you can create a 3D floor plan in Autodesk Architectural Desktop and then link the file to Autodesk VIZ to study materials and lighting and to create high-quality renderings. If you return to the Autodesk Architectural Desktop session to modify the floor plan, those changes can be updated in the Autodesk VIZ session, preserving any materials and lighting defined in the linked model.

DWG Linking allows you to use the most appropriate application for the job. Autodesk VIZ lets you append data to a design that may be too “heavy” or otherwise inappropriate for a production application. For example, you might use Autodesk VIZ software to turn 2D sections into 3D representations, or to add materials, representations of plants, lighting effects, and so on to the master design. Normally you wouldn’t want to store this extra data in your primary production application, but neither would you want redo work when the design in the application changes.

To support this workflow, Autodesk VIZ also offers a powerful substitution command that allows you to maintain the most appropriate data representation for the tool being used. For example, a furniture element may be represented simply as a 2D symbol in a production drawing. Once this drawing is linked to Autodesk VIZ, all instances of this 2D symbol can be quickly substituted with a 3D representation that may contain all the information about materials.

Multimedia and Communications Tools
With its technological roots in 3ds max™, the leading design software for digital content creation, Autodesk VIZ provides state-of-the-art tools for digital creation and output. Combined with the latest global illumination rendering capabilities, these tools provide unprecedented flexibility for communicating and presenting designs in the representation most appropriate to the task. For example:

• During model creation, you can manipulate geometry and objects, try different materials, and set lighting in a fully interactive viewport. You can quickly calculate lighting studies (daylight or artificial) and preview or analyze illuminated scenes in the interactive viewport.
  
  
• You can automatically create animated shadow and lighting studies that show the effect of the sun over a specified time.
  
  
• For internal reviews and collaboration, you can quickly render still images, 180-degree panoramic images, and walk-through animations at varying levels of resolution and fidelity.
  
  
• For presentations and competitions, you can create compelling rendered images and animations of the highest professional caliber. Autodesk VIZ offers powerful network rendering features so that you can get the job done sooner.

 

System Requirements
The following are minimum and recommended requirements for running Autodesk® VIZ.

• Intel® Pentium® III or compatible PC, with 300MHz processor or greater
• Microsoft® Windows® 2000 or Windows ME
• 256MB RAM (minimum) (512+MB recommended for global illumination rendering)
• Graphics card supporting 1024x768x16-bit color minimum (OpenGL and Direct 3D hardware acceleration; 24-bit color recommended)