The highest quality pictures available in DeskArtes are calculated by this technique. DeskArtes provides one of the most efficient raytracers on the market. It can simulate shadows, reflections, transparency, complex textured surfaces, and all the other photo realistic components for the final presentation images.
With many computer system resentation images can only be generated at the final stage of the design cycle. The efficiency of the raytrace module in DeskArtes means that the highest quality images can be used as a design tool as part of the design process.
The raytrace module, called ExTrace, is started in its own window with the command EXTRACEÞStart/Update . The surfaces currently on the screen will be used to generate the picture.
The drawing is started at a low resolution and, unless interrupted, refined until the final resolution is reached. This technique is particularly effective because you can very quickly check the picture is as you expected. You can interrupt the computation at any time, and make changes to the image if required.
It may take a little time to compute full resolution ray traced images. Therefore, when you are confident that the picture is as required, the final picture will be calculated as a background process. A background process is a job that needs no user interaction and so the computer can work on it whenever it gets a spare moment. You can continue working on the computer though you may find a slight reduction in the responsiveness of the computer, particularly on NT machines.
ExTrace will ask when batch processing should be begun, as well as the name and the desired size of the image. After being processed, the final ExTrace images is viewed by double clicking on the file in the file manager window.