> "Bald Eagle" <cre### [at] netscapenet> wrote:
>
> Looks like you have pretty much fixed the issue then, I think you could improve
> the lighting by using light_fading and area lights though see attached all I
> changed is the light_source to be:
>
> #declare Bulb =
> light_source {<0, 3.5, 0> rgb <1, 1, 1>*1
>   looks_like {
>    Round_Cone2( <0, -2.4, 0>, 0.95, <0, 0.7, 0>, 1.80, 1 )
>    texture {LightBulb_Glass}
>    double_illuminate
>    //light_source {<0, 3.5, 0> rgb <1, 1, 1>*0.4}
>    scale 0.8
>    }
>                                    area_light
>                                    <-0.5, 0, -0.5> <0.5 0, 0.5> // lights spread
> out across this distance (x * z)
>                                    4, 4                // total number of lights
> in grid (4x*4z = 16 lights)
>                                    area_illumination on
>                                    adaptive 0          // 0,1,2,3...
>                                    jitter              // adds random softening
> of light
>                                    circular            // make the shape of the
> light circular
>                                    orient              // orient light
>                                    fade_distance 50
>                                    fade_power 2
> }
>
> Rendered with radiosity on using the basic settings from the insert menu.
>
> have you also thought about using media to make a glow effect where the bulb is,
> will slow things down a bit but is a nice effect.
>
> Sean
>

A small advice on using fading lights:
It's usualy recomended to set fade_distance to the width of the 
area_light and adjust the intensity of the light as needed.
In your case, the area_light is 0.5 unit whide, you adjust as follow:

light_source {<0, 3.5, 0> rgb <1, 1, 1>*100*100
  area_light 0.5*x 0.5*y
  5 5 // prefer to use 5, 9, 17, 33, 65, ...
  adaptive 0
  circular orient
  fade_power 2
  fade_distance 1
}

If you use a 33 by 33 array for the area_light, with adaptive 0, it's 
not realy slower than 4 by4 and may not require the use of jitter.

Using a small area_light jittered array with antialiasing can slow you 
down as the noise caused by the jittering will force antialiasing in 
area where it's not otherwise needed.

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