"bardgaijin" <nomail@nomail> wrote in message 
news:web.4874b3da9401de58c86a64a40@news.povray.org...
> Hello. I'm looking for a bit of advice or a tutorial on lighting a room.
> The problem I seem to be having is getting the ceiling to be properly
> illuminated. I have the camera situated at "eye level" and looking 
> straight
> ahead.
> Depending on where I put the lights the floor & walls show up fine, but 
> the
> ceiling is black and/or very dark. Reasonably sure that light just isn't
> hitting it...
>
> I've tried placing a standard (point) light_source at ceiling height, and 
> I've
> tried placing a light source "behind" the camera.

It should be below the ceiling height by some distance, otherwise it won't 
cast any light directly onto the ceiling.

>
> Any hints or any simple little examples floating around somewhere? 
> Something
> basic with just a floor, ceiling, and some walls would be greatly 
> appreciated.
>
> Ideally, I'm looking to place a couple recessed panel lights, but one step 
> at a
> time for a newbie, right?
>
> Thanks for your help.
> -Alex

You probably want to read the section on 'Light Fading' in the help (section 
3.4.7.9 in the Windows help file).

You might like to try playing with the settings in the simple example below. 
The main ones are probably the fade_distance and fade_power on the light 
which make the light act more like a real light.

Much of the light in a room is reflected off other surfaces. You can emulate 
that using the reflection setting on the finish of the various objects in 
the room or you can approximate it by giving poorly lit surfaces some 
ambience. If you need just the ceiling to be brighter then define it as a 
separate object and you can give it its own ambient setting. If you are 
using recessed lighting built into the ceiling you'll probably have to use 
the ambient setting to get any light shining off the ceiling because none 
will fall on it directly.

I find that making surfaces a little rough using a small agate setting on 
the normal can also make quite a big difference with interior scenes.

To get very realistic lighting there are a very large number of options 
available in POV-Ray and there are quite a number of tutorials on the 
different options and approaches. Once you've got a scene that's close to 
what you want it can be helpful to post an image on povray.binaries.images 
that illustrates any specific lighting problems to seek specific advice.

Regards,
Chris B.

camera {location <0,1.7,-1.2> look_at <0,1.7,0> angle 90}
light_source {<0,1.9 ,0>, rgb 0.7
  fade_distance 4
  fade_power 1
}
box {<-2,0,-2>,<2,2.3,2>
  pigment {rgb 1}
  normal {agate 0.05 scale 0.01}
  finish {ambient 0.5}
}

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