Render and animation

View → Materials Browser

Note - if your ribbon is missing buttons, right click in the grey part of your ribbon that has no buttons, then go to "show tab" and "show panels", put a check mark next to everything to show everything.  Go to your Tool palette groups - make sure visual styles is checked.  You can get to your materials browser from either the visual styles menu, or view menu.    

Click on home, then open up AutoDesk library, tab through all of your options.

Click on the arrow next to the material you want to load it into the browser.  Select a surface, then right click on the material, and assign the material to the surface.

choose the most dominant color / texture first, and and just assign everything to the dominant color.

EXPLODE - This will let you start re-assigning different materials to individual pieces of your object.  

Lighting - go to the visualize tab, and click on sun status.

adjust exposure

This is where you can experiment with different lights, backgrounds etc.  

Under backgrounds, you can choose solid, gradient, or put in your own image.

Do a google image search for nice nature backgrounds, or whatever you would like, save the pict onto your desktop, and import it into CAD.  

Add Shadows!

Animation:
Camera moving around your object. 

Draw a couple of pathways around your object (PLINE).  You might want to experiment with paths from different heights.

Type in ANIPATH   (RENDER -  ANIMATION MOTION PATH - to get render toolbar, right click on grey area, show tools, and show render)

Use a Path for camera and point for target.  Decide what format you want your video in, frames, etc.

You might have to create a few movies before you get the angles just right.  

You can create paths that walk through your house, or around it, above it - anywhere you want to go!


Example youtube explaining it:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmE7UEiE1Nc