Brendan Hurley wrote:
> 
> Dear folks,
> I've been using POV since '92; I've rendered more than a hundred
> scenes.  But the one area that I have made almost no progress in is
> cool, realistic lighting.  In the attached ZIP file I am inclosing a
> POV, INC, INI, and GIF of one scene for my current project.  There are
> two spotlights on a wall above a door.  The lights illuminate the ground
> and the surrounding area, but there is no hint of highlighting on the
> wall.  I have been tweaking this lighting code on and off for two years
> and am no closer to the cone of light than I was at the beginning.
> 
> Any help will be wonderful!  Any artist that can provide the proper the
> code for the door lights ( and/or all the lights ) will be credited and
> praised on my gallery site profusely.
> That will be Gallery Four:
> http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Network/4969/gall4a.html
> 
> A general comment: I've been brousing thru hundreds of POV/ 3D/ graphics
> sites in the last two years.  Many, many sites offer tutorials in POV
> basics but few if any offer lessions in the advanced features.  If there
> are such tutorial pages around I would be grateful to hear about them.
> Hell! after I master some advanced stuff, I'll write some lessons
> myself!  I was educated to be a high school teacher and I used to be a
> decent writer.
> 
> Well, thank to all in advance!
> --Brendan
> 
> --
> Michael Brendan Hurley           ShadowDancerEnterprizes, LTD.
> http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Network/4969/
> http://www.saber.net/~mbhcgc/
> mbh### [at] sabernet

 I really don't have time to go through all of your code but a quick glance
through the .inc file revealed some pretty low diffuse levels in the wood
textures you are using. If you want them to pick-up highlights from the
spot lights I would suggest you bump them up to diffuse 0.4 - 0.6. At 0.2
they will hardly react with the lights at all. You seem to have the spot
lights set up ok so I doubt they are your problem.
 I also see that you are using Pov v3.0. You owe it to yourself to upgrade
to the newest version of the program which now stands at Pov v3.1 rev G.
There have been several bug fixes plus new features and a superb new editor
for the windows version. I don't recall if Pov v3.0 allowed light settings
higher that one but you can in pov v3.1 have a light source with a much
brighter light that you could in say v2.2 by using values like the following
example:

light_source { <-100, 100, -100> color rgb<10,10,10> }

These brighter lights can give you better control of how it interacts with
surface highlights. It can also wash out a scene quickly if you get carried
away with it.

For a comprehensive list of tutorials both beginner and advanced plus all of
the other Pov goodies you could ask for see my links collection posted in the
announcement group
here on this server.

P.S. This is a non binaries group. Instead of posting your source here you
should have posted your question here and then posted the source in the
povray.binaries.scene-files
group with a message saying the source could be
viewed there.

-- 
Ken Tyler
  
mailto://tylereng@pacbell.net
http://home.pacbell.net/tylereng/links.htm

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