environment

The environment of a scene has a significant impact on the appearance of a visualization. Environments can affect material properties like reflections and be used as skylights for the global illumination of a scene or be used background elements that don’t affect the content of a scene. Spheres that surround the entire scene are used to display panoramic HDR images or parametric sky shaders that generate environments based on the date, time and weather. Apart from the global environment any 3D object can be used as environment asset in a scene to specifically affect material properties or lighting.