"jhu" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> Didn't know about the 'orient' keyword. It works, but it's only marginally
> faster than a group of lights, at least on the test render.

You'll find out the difference if you're going for high quality and make use of
the "adaptive" keyword.

The combo

  area_light MyDiameter * x, MyDiameter * y, 9, 9
  adaptive 1
  jitter
  circular orient

(sometimes using "adaptive 0" instead) is my personal favorite for major light
sources in any scene. To get the same quality from individual lights, you'd have
to use a spherical arrangement of several hundred individual light sources
(about a hundred just to make up for the maximum resolution of the area light,
plus plenty more to make up for the additional smoothing effect of the "jitter"
keyword), while the speed is much closer to that of about 10 individual lights.

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