Light Source Illuminator

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March 9th, 2010 admin Leave a comment Go to comments

Light Source Illuminator

Candles And Other Light Sources In The 3D World

Lit candles are often very difficult to make a material for. For instance, think about a lit candle. The primary problem is that because candle wax is translucent, it appears to be somewhat lit when the wick is lit. There's never really been a way to recreate this in your 3D application easily-if at all.

However, in your 3D application, you have the Translucency value in the Ray trace material to simulate this effect very well. Much like when you are dealing with light bulbs, there are several tips for dealing with that kind of materials.

Lights illuminate semi transparent materials. Remember that if a light source is near a Translucent matl it appears to be lit unless you exclude it from the light source. Note that this includes lights that reside within the object with a Translucent element.

Light intensity affects semi transparent materials. The brighter the light is, the brighter the Translucent mapl will be. Extremely bright lights wash out the subtleties of a Translucent material. Be careful to not overpower your lights.

Use darker colors for translucency. Semi transparency can be affected by a global color or a map. In either case, you should take care to not use maps that have high brightness values. This overpowers the translucent material.

Translucency does not take long to render. Even though Semi transparency is part of the Ray trace material, it does not require the calculations that reflections or refractions require. Unless your Translucent material is using either reflection or refraction, your rendering time should not be seriously impacted.

You might use translucency to make candle wax appear to be more realistic. Note that two lights are used to get better translucency effects.

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