Le_Forgeron <jgr### [at] freefr> wrote:

> What is GI, AO ?
>
> About soft shadow... if it's a point of light, it cannot be soft.-
>
> Or you have a definition of point that is no more a point.
>
> Area lights have many optimisation (such as adaptative) which can be
> used to have real large array without the cost of as many point lights.
>
> jitter, orient & circular are cool too.
>
> http://www.povray.org/documentation/3.7.0/r3_4.html#r3_4_4_1_5
>
> Maybe wanting something like the fading cone of spot light ?

GI = Indirect Lighting (Like Radiosity), AO is a fast method of faking shadows
in crevices, which helps enormously when faking indirect lighting to speed up
renders.

Also you can have soft shadows with point lights (or in fact any light), many
other render engines do it. You just have to trace a bunch of shadow rays up
towards the light rather than just one, and give them a semi-random offset
between the direction of the light and a user defined maximum (which defines how
soft the shadow is). The more rays you trace the cleaner it will be.

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