Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> Kenneth <kdw### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
> > What
> > strikes me immediately is that lightgrid.jpg (which I take to be an array
> > of real point lights) produces *much* smoother illumination on the wall and
> > sphere than does the area light.  Surprisingly so.
>
>   Why surprisingly?

Ah, I see what you mean (and you're right, it's not so surprising after
all): The area light's *illumination* is just a point--producing the same
direct illumination on objects as a single point light would (disregarding
shadows.)  While the light grid of real point lights is lighting the
objects from multiple sources and directions.  Thus automatically smoother.

What *is* surprising though, is that the large highlight on the sphere is so
smooth, when using the light grid; I would have expected multiple, small and
discreet highlights. (Perhaps there are, but they appear to blend together
quite well.) An interesting and useful discovery, for me.
>
> > And the shadows from the
> > sphere look smoother than I would have imagined.
>
>   Well, there's the same amount of point lights than in the area light.
> The shadows should be pretty similar.

But given that the light grid is casting multiple *distinct* shadows, while
the area light is creating "jittered" shadows from all(?) of its lights,
shouldn't the area light produce much smoother shadowing?  (Although, I
admit, your experiment seems to prove me wrong there.)

KW

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