Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
Virtual Lights
Without light , we would see nothing. The
same applies to the virtual world within
LightWave. In order to “see” anything in
LightWave, you must (in essence) use one
of LightWave's lights to send a “wavicle”
(a wave/particle of light) scattering off the
surface of an object and into the lens of
LightWave's camera. (When you think of
your eyes as cameras, this is exactly the
way things operate in real life.)
Each of the lights within LightWave has a
real-world counterpart. A distant light is like
a light that is so far away that its rays all
behave as if they are parallel to one another.
This is like sunlight or moonlight or nonde-
script “bounced” lighting. Distant lights can
cast shadows, but they only cast hard-edged
ray-traced shadows (shadows that are per-
fect in every detail except that they are also
perfectly sharp).
Distant lights give a
flat, almost “spacey”
kind of feeling.
They're great for
when you want to
imply that light has
traveled great dis-
tances to impact the
objects (like from the
sun, moon, or distant
stars). Distant lights
that don't cast shad-
ows are also great for
precisely suggesting
ambient light (more on
this in Chapter 4).
Point lights are like
candles or non-frosted
“globe” lightbulbs.
Like distant lights,
point lights can cast
only hard-edged,
ray-traced shadows.
Point lights cast
their light from a sin-
gle point. Notice how
you don't actually see
the light itself but only
the impact of the
light's waves. (If you
wanted to see a light
“bulb,” you would
Figure 1-6: The different kinds of lights available to a LightWave artist.
Figure 1-7: Distant light.
Figure 1-8: Point light.
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