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30 Jul 2024 00:21:03 EDT (-0400)
  Area light questions (Message 1 to 5 of 5)  
From: regdo
Subject: Area light questions
Date: 26 Jan 2005 03:33:51
Message: <41f755ef$1@news.povray.org>
Hi to all.
A few dumb questions about area lights.
An area light is a single light source. It's made of several 
sub-sources, but you can't make it "look_like" an array of bulbs, right 
? I mean, you can't automatically correlate the number of sources in the 
area light and the look_like statement ?

If you want to replace an area_light (say 4x4 with color <1,1,1>) is it 
equivalent to set a 4x4 array of individual point lights with color 
<1,1,1>/16 ?

I have many more about radiosity and photons, but I'll wait for those ;-)
Thanks for your help.


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From: Tom Melly
Subject: Re: Area light questions
Date: 26 Jan 2005 04:34:43
Message: <41f76433$1@news.povray.org>
"regdo" <reg### [at] wanadoofr> wrote in message
news:41f755ef$1@news.povray.org...
>
> If you want to replace an area_light (say 4x4 with color <1,1,1>) is it
> equivalent to set a 4x4 array of individual point lights with color
> <1,1,1>/16 ?

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.


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From: Tim Nikias
Subject: Re: Area light questions
Date: 26 Jan 2005 04:42:01
Message: <41f765e9$1@news.povray.org>
> 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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From: Warp
Subject: Re: Area light questions
Date: 26 Jan 2005 06:20:33
Message: <41f77d01@news.povray.org>
Btw, some facts about area_lights can be found at:

http://tag.povray.org/povQandT/misconceptions.html#arealightconfusion2

-- 
#macro M(A,N,D,L)plane{-z,-9pigment{mandel L*9translate N color_map{[0rgb x]
[1rgb 9]}scale<D,D*3D>*1e3}rotate y*A*8}#end M(-3<1.206434.28623>70,7)M(
-1<.7438.1795>1,20)M(1<.77595.13699>30,20)M(3<.75923.07145>80,99)// - Warp -


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From: Alain
Subject: Re: Area light questions
Date: 27 Jan 2005 18:09:17
Message: <41f9749d$1@news.povray.org>
regdo nous apporta ses lumieres en ce 2005-01-26 03:33:
> Hi to all.
> A few dumb questions about area lights.
> An area light is a single light source. It's made of several 
> sub-sources, but you can't make it "look_like" an array of bulbs, right 
> ? I mean, you can't automatically correlate the number of sources in the 
> area light and the look_like statement ?
> 
> If you want to replace an area_light (say 4x4 with color <1,1,1>) is it 
> equivalent to set a 4x4 array of individual point lights with color 
> <1,1,1>/16 ?
> 
> I have many more about radiosity and photons, but I'll wait for those ;-)
> Thanks for your help.
You can use a look_like to make an area_light "apears" like an aray. Have the
look_like use an 
object that is an aray of small spheres. It don't have to have the same number of
components or 
actual size as the area_light. The look_like have NO effect on the behaviour of the
light it is 
added to.

Alain


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