Understanding the Principles of Light Behavior - Photographic Rendering with V-Ray for SketchUp - page 158

Chapter 5. Understanding the

Principles of Light Behavior

Even though light is something that everyone on the planet makes use of every day, I
would think it fair to say that more than a few of us are somewhat in the dark when it
comes to understanding how it really works.

If my own research is anything to go by, most of us will admit that the smattering
of understanding garnered when covering the basic concepts of how light works in
high school Physics has, for the most part, disappeared into the black hole of disused
memory with the passage of time.

While it does need to be noted that having an understanding of the physics of light
isn't absolutely essential for us to become a skilled user of the lighting tools that are
available in V-Ray for SketchUp, it also should be noted that understanding at least
the basics of how the thing works will most definitely help. This is because most of
what we learn regarding how real light works can be transferred over to working with
the lighting tools in V-Ray or indeed any GI render engine of our choice.

Of course, the last thing that you may have the time or inclination to do at this point
in your skill-building journey is to slog your way through an entire chapter of a topic
that turns out to be nothing more than a dry physics recitation. Well, hopefully, we can
avoid such a situation by taking a slightly different approach to our technical learning.

Wherever possible, alongside a brief textual discussion of an important technical point
that we need to understand, there will also be some hands-on exercises that will help
visually reinforce the point being made in the text. Some of the exercises involve us-
ing V-Ray tools (inside SketchUp, of course), while others take a more real-world,
hands-on approach. For example, we will be taking a look at the following topics:

• How light behaves
• What light decay is and how it works
• How to use the color temperature scale
• The cause of color bleed in renders and how we can control it