On Thu, 02 Nov 2000 07:59:08 -0500, Chris Huff wrote:
>Unfortunately, no. If you want soft shadows, use an area light, but 
>rendering will slow down. If you want a distant light, use MegaPOV's 
>parallel light feature. If you want both...area lights should also give 
>soft shadows with parallel light, if they don't it is a bug.

Yes.  A bug in your thinking.  The idea of a parallel area light doesn't
make any sense.  When MCB wrote the parallel-light code, he put in a 
special case for parallel area lights that does *something* that produces
soft shadows, but it doesn't have any physical basis and his arguments at
the time were (to me) less than convincing.  

If you want parallel lights, use parallel lights.  If you want soft shadows, 
use area lights.  If you want parallel lights with soft shadows, you should 
really stop smoking that stuff because it's bad for you, and the brain damage
might get in the way of implementing physically-based diffraction effects.

-- 
Ron Parker   http://www2.fwi.com/~parkerr/traces.html
My opinions.  Mine.  Not anyone else's.

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