POV-Ray : Newsgroups : povray.binaries.images : SunShadow - Bright soft shadows Server Time
10 Aug 2024 07:18:11 EDT (-0400)
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From: Renderdog
Subject: SunShadow - Bright soft shadows
Date: 17 Oct 2004 00:15:01
Message: <web.4171f15167b731bb59fbb9ef0@news.povray.org>
Hi All,

Using an area light with color values greater than one to
'blow out' the lighting on parts of an image, I noticed
some odd effects from the bright area light, so I produced
a scene file to isolate and examine the effects.

The scene file is posted at povray.text.scene-files and
includes some comments; wondering if my conclusions are
correct that this is normal and simply a result of the
color scaling necessary for colors greater than '1'?

This image shows the soft shadow from a very bright
light source, on a surface that has white and dark gray
colors. The top part of the image was rendered using
a bright white light (<1,1,1>*4).

The bottom part was rendered using a bright yellow light
(<1.00, 0.65, 0.35>*4).

The soft shadows on the dark grey parts appear normal
because no scaling was performed on that part, while the
white parts show a truncated soft shadow (and a color
tinge when lit by a yellow light).

Thanks,
Mark Slone


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Attachments:
Download 'sunshadow.jpg' (15 KB)

Preview of image 'sunshadow.jpg'
sunshadow.jpg


 

From: Mike Williams
Subject: Re: SunShadow - Bright soft shadows
Date: 17 Oct 2004 01:15:04
Message: <HJ9dMBA57fcBFwP0@econym.demon.co.uk>
Wasn't it Renderdog who wrote:
>Hi All,
>
>Using an area light with color values greater than one to
>'blow out' the lighting on parts of an image, I noticed
>some odd effects from the bright area light, so I produced
>a scene file to isolate and examine the effects.
>
>The scene file is posted at povray.text.scene-files and
>includes some comments; wondering if my conclusions are
>correct that this is normal and simply a result of the
>color scaling necessary for colors greater than '1'?
>
>This image shows the soft shadow from a very bright
>light source, on a surface that has white and dark gray
>colors. The top part of the image was rendered using
>a bright white light (<1,1,1>*4).
>
>The bottom part was rendered using a bright yellow light
>(<1.00, 0.65, 0.35>*4).
>
>The soft shadows on the dark grey parts appear normal
>because no scaling was performed on that part, while the
>white parts show a truncated soft shadow (and a color
>tinge when lit by a yellow light).
>
>Thanks,
>Mark Slone

I can't see anything other than colour clipping going on here.

With the white light
====================

In the grey areas the fully lit regions are 45.7% grey (I looked at the
output file with an image editor that tells me the colours of pixels
when I point at them), the fully shaded parts are completely black and
the intermediate parts are shades in between.

So, in the white areas the fully lit regions should be five times
brighter, i.e. RGB <2.25,2.25,2.25> but this gets clipped to <1,1,1>.
The shaded parts are still completely black. The intermediate regions,
before clipping, range from <0,0,0> to <2.25,2.25,2.25> but all those
brighter than <1,1,1> get clipped to <1,1,1> and that happens at 1/2.25
of the distance from the fully shaded zone leaving the rest of the
"shadow" zone to be clipped to 100% white.

With the coloured light
=======================

In the grey areas the fully lit regions are <0.457,0.297,0.160>, the
fully shaded parts are completely black and the intermediate parts are
shades in between.

So, in the white areas the fully lit regions should be five times
brighter, i.e. RGB <2.25,1.48,0.80> but this gets clipped to <1,1,0.8>,
a light creamy colour. The shaded parts are still completely black. The
intermediate regions, before clipping, range from <0,0,0> to
<2.25,1.48,0.80> but each colour channel gets independently clipped to
1. Because the channels start to get clipped at different distances, the
hue of the light changes.

For example, if we consider a point that is 10% illuminated, the colour
will be <0.225, 0.148, 0.080>. A point that is 20% illuminated will have
a colour which is double that - a brighter colour of the same hue.
However a point that is 50% illuminated gets the red channel clipped,
giving <1, 0.742, 0.400> instead of <1.143, 0.742, 0.400> so that's a
different hue.

-- 
Mike Williams
Gentleman of Leisure


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From: Renderdog
Subject: Re: SunShadow - Bright soft shadows
Date: 17 Oct 2004 02:45:00
Message: <web.417214329c88f9559fbb9ef0@news.povray.org>
Thanks for the insight Mike; very interesting.

I suppose the only way to eliminate the color fringing
(in an image where I want to 'blow out' the brightest
parts) would be to post-process the image so that all
the colors would be scaled instead of clipping the Red,
Green and Blue channels separately as POV-Ray does.

Maybe it would pay to render the image as a 16-bit
per color PNG and scale the RGB (in a program that
can perform the scaling at 16-bit) so the final 8-bit
per color image/print retains a good color range?


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From: Christoph Hormann
Subject: Re: SunShadow - Bright soft shadows
Date: 17 Oct 2004 04:20:02
Message: <ckt9rj$1qo$2@chho.imagico.de>
Renderdog wrote:
> [...]
> 
> The soft shadows on the dark grey parts appear normal
> because no scaling was performed on that part, while the
> white parts show a truncated soft shadow (and a color
> tinge when lit by a yellow light).

That effect is caused by the clipping of color values.  You can reduce 
this by using a smoother tone mapping curve like for example MegaPOV's 
film exposure patch:

http://megapov.inetart.net/manual-1.1/global_settings.html#film_exposure

Christoph

-- 
POV-Ray tutorials, include files, Sim-POV,
HCR-Edit and more: http://www.tu-bs.de/~y0013390/
Last updated 23 Sep. 2004 _____./\/^>_*_<^\/\.______


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From: Jeremy M  Praay
Subject: Re: SunShadow - Bright soft shadows
Date: 18 Oct 2004 08:37:34
Message: <4173b90e$1@news.povray.org>
I snapped these with my digital camera as part of a morning sunrise through 
a window.  To some extent, I notice a similar color tinge (pink) in the 
areas near the shadow.  The second image had more exposure.

-- 
Jeremy
www.beantoad.com


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Attachments:
Download 'sunrise.jpg' (10 KB) Download 'sunrise2.jpg' (3 KB)

Preview of image 'sunrise.jpg'
sunrise.jpg

Preview of image 'sunrise2.jpg'
sunrise2.jpg


 

From: Renderdog
Subject: Re: SunShadow - Bright soft shadows
Date: 19 Oct 2004 10:10:01
Message: <web.41751fb79c88f95b8a63dd50@news.povray.org>
"Jeremy M. Praay" <jer### [at] questsoftwarecom> wrote:
> I snapped these with my digital camera as part of a morning sunrise through
> a window.  To some extent, I notice a similar color tinge (pink) in the
> areas near the shadow.  The second image had more exposure.

Thanks for the photos; I thought I'd seen the tinge in photos before.
It actually gives the image a nice look but I'm concerned it might look
like a photograph while I'm going for a more "painted" look.

Probably nobody will notice, but unfortunately I did :-)


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