Fog
Fog is placed as objects you position and size, not as a single scene setting.
Fog used to be one switch on the scene: on or off, one colour, one distance. That works for a flat haze over everything and nothing else. A valley holding mist while the ridge above it stays clear needs fog that sits somewhere.
In release 2.0.73 fog became objects. You add them, place them, and size them the way you place anything else in Build.
The three kinds
Radial
A sphere, falling off from the centre
A pocket of haze: smoke in a room, mist in a hollow
Linear
A gradient along a line, from a start point to an end point
A bank of fog rolling in one direction
Camera
Depth from the camera outward, ignoring where the object sits
The old scene-wide fog: everything further away is hazier
Radial and linear fog are placed in the world. Camera fog is not: its transform is ignored, and it is measured from whichever camera is rendering.
Add a fog
Open Environment mode with the Environment button in the bottom toolbar of Build.
Click Fog. The bottom toolbar swaps to the fog tool, every fog in the scene shows its gizmo, and the add buttons appear.
Click Add Radial Fog or Add Linear Fog. Clicking drops the fog at the centre of the view. Dragging the button into the viewport drops it under the pointer instead.
Place it. A radial or linear fog is a scene object, so it carries the ordinary gizmo: move it and scale it the way you would anything else. A radial fog's radius is its scale, so keep that scale uniform. A linear fog runs along a line whose two ends are their own draggable handles.
Linear and radial fog also sit in the asset library alongside Populator, Extrude, Motion Path and Measurement, so you can drag one in from a search without opening the tool first.
A scene holds up to 64 fog objects. Past that, adding one raises a message saying so and nothing is added.
Colour and density
A fog's colour is the ordinary colour swatch in the properties bar, and the alpha of that colour is the density. New fog arrives white at half alpha. Pull the alpha down for a thin veil, up for something you cannot see through. Colour is not limited to grey: a red fog tints everything inside it.
Release 2.0.73 added alpha to the colour picker across Studio for exactly this reason, so the picker takes #RRGGBBAA and edits in HEX, RGB or HSL.
Fog Shape: Type, Near and Far
Fog Settings on a selected fog opens a panel headed Fog Shape.
Type
Switches between Linear and Radial. Not offered on camera fog.
Near
Where the gradient starts
Far
Where it finishes
For radial and linear fog, Near and Far run from 0 to 1 across the shape: 0 is the centre of the sphere or the start of the line, 1 is its edge. For camera fog they are world distances instead.
Setting Near higher than Far flips the gradient. That is deliberate, not a mistake to guard against: it is how you get fog that is thick close in and clears with distance.
Camera fog
Camera fog is the one that behaves like the old scene fog: haze that builds with distance from the camera, wherever the camera goes. The fog toolbar offers two.
Scene Camera Fog applies to the whole scene.
Shot Camera Fog belongs to one shot's camera and overrides the scene's for that shot. It appears on the toolbar only when a shot camera is in context, and you see it in that shot's picture-in-picture rather than in the main viewport.
The same toolbar slot changes job with the state of things. With no fog of that kind it reads Add. With one already there it reads Edit, and clicking selects it so the properties panel can edit it. While that fog is the current selection it reads Delete – camera fog has no gizmo in the viewport, so there is nowhere else to delete it from.
Both are also on the … menu when a camera is selected in Compose, which is the quicker route when you are already working a shot.
Only one camera fog applies to any given render: the shot camera's own if it has one, otherwise the scene's.
A camera fog's Near and Far are world distances. The sliders cover the everyday range and the number field goes further if you type into it.
Which fog paints over which
Fogs composite in order. Select one and use the … menu:
Apply Fog First moves it to the front of the sequence.
Apply Fog Last moves it to the end.
Camera fog sits outside that sequence entirely. It is always applied after every other fog in the scene.
Working with fogs without tripping over them
Outside the fog tool, select-all and marquee selection skip fogs, so a fog stretched across the scene does not come along every time you sweep a selection. Inside the fog tool the restriction runs the other way: selection is limited to fog objects, so nothing you do in there can disturb the set you built.
To get from a fog back into the tool, select it and use Edit fogs in the properties bar. Escape leaves the fog tool, as does the X in its toolbar, and you land back wherever you came in from.
Scenes you built before this
Nothing to redo. Any scene that had the old fog switch on is migrated the first time it loads: the old fog becomes a Scene Camera Fog object carrying the same colour, the same opacity, and the same near and far distances. It renders as it did. The difference is that you can now select it, edit it, delete it, or add other fogs around it.
Where fog does and does not show up
Fog lights the 3D viewport, the same as the rest of Build's environment. Render atmosphere is set separately, by the lighting preset you pick in Visualize. If you want haze in the render, say so there.
A dense fog you forgot about reads as a broken viewport. If the scene looks murky, check the fog in it before you start adjusting lights.
Related
Environment – the sun, ambient light, shadows, background and terrain
Lighting presets – where render atmosphere comes from
Working with objects – selection, parenting and transforms
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