> IIRC, the answer is 'no'. An area light is not just a shortcut for a grid
of
> point lights. It has some limitations and some advantages (mostly speed
and
> softness of shadows iirc) over a grid of point lights.

It's advantages are that soft-shadows can be calculated faster than using a
real array of point-lights when using the adaptive technique with
high-quality (large array) shadows. This depends on the complexity of the
scene/objects/materials, but generally, an area_light will be better.

It's disadvantage is that the lighting is still a point-light, so there'll
be no soft specular highlights, or even rectangular ones (depending on how
you set up the array). Area_lights only affect the shadows, not the lighting
itself (unless partly in shadow, but still, the specular terms etc are just
calculated based on a point, not an area).

-- 
"Tim Nikias v2.0"
Homepage: <http://www.nolights.de>

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