Lighting settings

Detailed (advanced) settings for different lights

Currently, the Piper system allows defining two independent light sources, whose light also appears in the Piper designer.

In addition to these, you can create an arbitrary number of light sources (e.g., halogen lamps) whose light will only be visible in the POV-RAY system, not in the designer.

The lights can be categorized into 9 different categories. Their properties (brightness, color, etc.) can be set independently.

If you enter the POV-RAY page and open the window with the Advanced light settings switch, the lighting settings options will appear.

At the fourth and fifth quality levels, a Reflection (Radiosity) window also appears because radiosity only works at these quality levels.

You can take advantage of this level by trying to mimic a more natural lighting effect in your scene.

The position and direction of the light sources set in the designer remain, but the brightness and color need to be set here independently of the designer.

We can use three different types of light sources:

1. General diffuse light, which illuminates everything evenly without casting shadows.
   
   
2. Point light source, which illuminates evenly in all directions in space. There are two of these (Category 1 and 2). These are the direct lights used in the standard display of Piper.
   
   
3. Spotlight source, which illuminates in a specific direction with an adjustable light cone. There are six of these (Categories 3 - 8). These are primarily used for halogen lamps in Piper but can be used freely.

Properties of a light type:

• The 1st slider is used to adjust the brightness.
  
  
• The 2nd slider adjusts the angle of the light cone.
  
  
• The 3rd slider is used to set the percentage size of the transitional area at the edge of the light cone.
  
   
  Spotlight with sharp and soft edges.
  
  

Fading

This refers to how the strength of the light diminishes as a function of distance from the light source.

• The 1st value determines the distance over which the light remains effective. This is not a direct value; the distance also depends on the brightness and the angle of the light cone. If no value is specified here, the light will illuminate everything with the same intensity without any attenuation.
  
  
• The 2nd value indicates the degree of attenuation, which can be 1, 2, or 3. With a value of 1, the light dims gradually; with 2, it dims more strongly; and with 3, it dims very abruptly.
  
   
  Spotlight with attenuation and without.

Area light

This is necessary for diffuse shading and only has an effect if the 3rd, 4th, or 5th quality is chosen.

• It has two parameters: size and pieces.
  
  
• Diffuse shading is achieved by considering the light source as an area rather than a point. The size parameter specifies the side length of this square area.
  
  
• The pieces value determines how many light sources there are in this square area, which will be the square of the set number. This function makes the visual much more realistic but also slows it down due to the mentioned reasons.
  
  
• Experience suggests that an 8-piece value is ideal, giving a homogeneous shadow while still being acceptable in time. The shadow dispersion can be adjusted by changing the size.
  
   
  Soft and hard shadows.

Colour

You can set the color of the light source using the familiar colour mixer.

Full reflection, radiosity (only appears at quality 4 and 5)

This means that the colors of nearby objects also affect each other and reflect.

• The effect (%) slider allows you to adjust the intensity of the radiosity.
  
  
• The step slider can determine the number of reflections to be calculated. Multiple reflections make the image much brighter under normal lighting conditions than it would be at other quality levels.
  
  
• Therefore, the light (%) slider can uniformly dim the lights. If you increase the effect, you need to lower the light and vice versa. Find the ideal setting through experimentation!

Saving lighting ettings, schemes

• We have provided a few basic light schemes to help speed up basic settings, and you can create up to 10 of your own.
  
  
• Every time an image is created, the lighting settings are saved in a .dat file with the same name as the image, which can be imported at any time from the lower list using the import icon.
  
  
• Starting with version 3.7, rooms also store the lighting settings.

Keywords: #lighting settings #advanced lighting settings #light source #light type #area light #effect #fading