About Environments

A default visualization ambience is a predefined ambience displayed in the app, when there is no active environment in the experience. This type of ambience is specific to 3DEXCITE apps.

The default visualization ambience contains preset HDRI lighting, HDRI background, and custom configuration settings.

If there is no active environment when you play an experience (either in the app or in other apps such as 3DPlay), the ambience is automatically displayed.

Important: You cannot customize the default visualization ambience. To prevent any change of the ambience, some commands are unavailable: In the 3D area, the Ambience and Style sections no longer exist in the context menu. The Ambience and Camera command (in the View section of the action bar) is unavailable in the app.

A PLM ambience is an ambience created with Ambience Studio.

To activate a viewpoint displayed in an ambience, double-click the viewpoint's node in the tree of the Project panel. The viewpoint is represented by the following icon:

For more information about ambiences, see Ambience Studio User's Guide.

A planetary environment provides a realistic and time-driven representation of the planets (Earth or Mars, for example).

For more information about planetary environments, see Planets Studio User's Guide.

Performance may sometimes be an issue when you work with complex experiences using multiple scenes. For example, you can switch between interiors and exteriors during the same playing session.

To improve performance, you can change the quality and rendering options of a planetary environment using JavaScript.

Experience's Content	Action
Interiors Scenes that require few planetary effects	Switch the rendering mode to Sky only or to Off.
All scenes	Use the shadow quality options to adjust the shadow distance. For more information, see Quality.
Mix of simple and very complex scenes	Change the quality profile (low, medium, high, ultra) For more information, see Quality.

A location is a 3D actor that can be positioned with GPS coordinates. Locations are essential when you work with planetary environments.

You can place a location around the globe, or anywhere in the space.

In the tree, you can only create a location under the 3D actors node.

If a planetary environment contains favorites, locations are created from the position of each favorite.

In a scene, a location is always considered as a local object.

If you switch between scenes, the following happens:

• The current location of a scene automatically becomes the active location.
• The viewpoint is updated with the viewpoint of the current camera.

Planetary environments use the WG S84 coordinate reference system (CRS). For more information about geolocation, see Building and Civil Assemblies User's Guide.

You can import and use geolocation data of a product if some conditions are met:

• When you insert a geolocated product, your experience must contain an active planetary environment.
• If any, locations must be inactive.

Once imported, the product's coordinates are automatically converted to the WG S84 CRS. A location is created from the converted coordinates (latitude and longitude).

If you modify the product's coordinates in another app, you must reinsert the product to update the location.

You can only work with one active environment at a time in your experience.

When you activate an environment, the environment is active in the authoring mode.

You can only have a single current environment in a scene.

When you play an experience, the current environment is the active environment. If you switch between scenes, the current environment automatically becomes the active environment.