Dave Dunn <poi### [at] aolcom> wrote:
> I was under the impression that he had adaptive supersampling (and probably
> jitter) turned off

  No, the problem is exactly the opposite: He had adaptive supersampling
turned on, but with a too low value, which results in artifacts in the
extreme cases shown in the page.
  IMO it's very unfair to compare shadows resulting from an area_light with
a too low adaptive value with the ones resulting from an explicit grid of
point lights. In order to make the comparison fairly, the adaptive value
has to the raised as high that no artifacts are seen.

  The real advantage of an area_light over an explicit grid of point
lights is that you can have *lots* of lights in the area_light without
the rendering slowing down unacceptably. For example you could have 30x30
lights in your area_light, and with the proper adaptive setting the rendering
time would be still acceptable. With an explicit grid of 30x30 point lights
you'd better have a couple of weeks to wait for your rendering to finish.

  The only defect of area_light is that it only affects shadow testing and
nothing more. This means that diffuse and specular lighting will still be
the one of a point light. (I'm not saying this is a good thing; it's just
the way it's currently implemented.)
  It might be possible to take into account the area_light settings when
calculating diffuse and specular lighting. Perhaps someone will try a
patch in the near future?

-- 
#macro N(D)#if(D>99)cylinder{M()#local D=div(D,104);M().5,2pigment{rgb M()}}
N(D)#end#end#macro M()<mod(D,13)-6mod(div(D,13)8)-3,10>#end blob{
N(11117333955)N(4254934330)N(3900569407)N(7382340)N(3358)N(970)}//  - Warp -

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