Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
b. Area lights cast light away from their
surface, so the larger the surface, the
softer the shadows. I want the Warm
light, the least intense of the two, to
cast very soft shadows. With Warm
selected, activate the Size tool under
Modify | Transform | Size
. In the
numeric input panel (in the lower left
of LightWave's window), enter
2m
for
all axes of the item's scale.
Give things a render.
Figure 4-22: Rendering what we've got, the still life
is beginning to show both depth and warmth.
Step 5: Ray-Traced Soft
Shadows
What if you want things to look more realis-
tic? (Figure 4-22 looks neat, but it still has a
flavor of 3D-ish-ness to it.) LightWave gives
you area and linear lights to have it figure
out
exactly
what the shadows would look
like when cast from a light that has some
surface area to it, like a fluorescent tube or
a light with a diffusing screen in front of it.
a.
Figure 4-23: The light in this render behaves more
like it does in the real world.
In the Light Properties window, set the
Light Type of both your lights to
Area
Light
. Because area lights tend to be a
lot brighter than other kinds of lights,
change the Light Intensity for Cool to
50%
and for Warm to
18%
. Double-
check both lights to make sure Shadow
Type is set to
Ray Trace
.
Note
Area and linear lights can have a “graini-
ness” to their shadows. You can reduce this
by increasing the Linear/Area Light Quality
setting in the Light Properties window. You
can enter values from 1 to 5, 1 being fast
but not so good and 5 being slow but very
polished. (The default value is 4.)
You can also reduce the graininess of all
shadows by activating Shading Noise Reduc-
tion, accessible in the Global Illumination
window. This adds a Shading Noise Reduc-
tion pass to every antialiasing pass of your
render. It does slow things down, but what it
does for the quality of the output is worth
the wait in a final render.
Note
Setting the Shadow Type to Ray Trace tells
the
lights
that you want them to calculate
exact shadows. LightWave's rendering
engine still needs to know that
it
needs to
pay attention to Ray Trace Shadows.
Be sure
this is active under the Rendering Options
.
Note
The finished scene for this step is:
Scenes\Chapter_04\StillLife_03_Area_F.lws.
