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LIGHTs

ambient

This light is ambiental, since it does not come from any particular point or direction. It illuminates all points on all surfaces.


conic

The distribution of this light is an oriented cone.
It may be used to simulate spot-lights.
It produces sharp shadows, and since they are ray-traced they may be slow to compute.


directional

This is an infinitely distant light that comes from a particular direction.
It may be used to model the distribution of the sun.
It produces sharp shadows, and since they are ray-traced they may be slow to compute.


directional-patch

This is a quadrilateral patch that emits light in one direction only.
It may be used to simulate windows.
It produces sharp shadows, and since they are ray-traced they may be slow to compute.


patch

This is a quadrilateral patch that emits light in all directions. It may be used to simulate neon fixtures.
It produces accurate soft shadows, and since they are ray-traced they may be very slow to compute, accordingly to the global lighting settings defined into the "default" interface. In paticular the most significative values that influence the time to quality ratio are the "lighting-angle" and the "lighting-threshold".


point

This type spreads light into all directions from an infinitesimal point. It may be used to simulate light bulbs.
It produces sharp shadows, and since they are ray-traced they may be slow to compute.


soft

This type spreads light into all directions from an infinitesimal point. It may be used to simulate light bulbs.
It simulates soft shadows using a simple zbuffering technique, and so it is much faster than real area lights, even if it produces similar results.
The drawback of this approach is the inability to produce filtered shadows and volumetric shading.


soft-conic

The distribution of this light is an oriented cone.
It may be used to simulate spot-lights.
It simulates soft shadows using a simple zbuffering technique, and so it is much faster than real area lights, even if it produces similar results.
The drawback of this approach is the inability to produce filtered shadows and volumetric shading.