Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
ing as a perfect mirror, reflecting the spheroid and the
.hdr
image, which
we had formerly set in the
World
material.
10. Go back to the
Object
window and reselect the spheroid. In the
Ray Vis-
ibility
tab, uncheck the
Glossy
item and watch the spheroid still rendered
but no more reflected by the mirroring plane, as shown here:
11. Save the file as
start_13.blend
.
The
Ray Visibility
trick we've just seen, of course, is not needed for lamps, because
a lamp cannot be rendered in any case. At the moment, only
Point
,
Spot
,
Area
, and
Sun
lamps are supported inside Cycles;
Hemi
lamps are rendered as
Sun
lamps.
Both lamps and mesh-lights can use textures to, for example, project colored lights
on the scene, but only a mesh-light can be unwrapped and UV mapped with an im-
age map.
More, it seems that mesh-lights work better than lamps in Cycles, that is, the light
casting and diffusion looks better and more realistic with an emitting plane. It's not
clear if this is just a technical lamp limitation or if it will be improved in the future.
One advantage lamps have on mesh-lights is that they are easily made unidirection-
al, that is, apart from
Point
lamps, they cast light in only one direction, as shown in
the following screenshot:
