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Lighting Introduction
Along with objects and the camera, lights are a basic element in any LightWave Scene. In Layout, a Scene must always have at least one light. In fact, LightWave will not allow you to remove the last light source. If you really don’t need it, you can just turn its Light Intensity to zero or deactivate the light in the Scene Editor.
LightWave has several types of lights, and you can give them different names, colors, and attributes. Along with lens flares, volumetric and shadow casting options, you can control light with a high degree of precision. All of these features are found within the Lights tab of the Render Globals Panel.
Along with the several lights, LightWave also features radiosity and caustic light effects, which can add tremendous realism to your scenes.
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Lighting in LightWave has been completely overhauled. Listed below are the areas of change: - Light power values are now listed in Lux (Lumen per meter squared)
- The Dome light has been removed and the Distant light given an Angle value like it
- The Environment light is used to add light from the backdrop for a scene
- Area and NGon lights now only point in one direction and can act as portals
- Lights can be visible to the camera
- All lights except point are sampled
- All lights can optionally affect volumetrics
- Ambient Intensity has been removed
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LightWave lights don't have to act exactly like lights in the real world. For instance, you can choose not to see a LightWave light source, only its illuminating effect in the scene. This is actually a handy feature because unlike a movie set, you can place lights anywhere, including in front of the camera.
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Basic Light Attributes
Light Properties are to be found by selecting a light and hitting P or using the Properties button just to the right of the Current Item dropdown. This will bring up the Light Properties panel. This panel can vary quite a lot in size depending on what sort of light you’ve chosen, but they all have options at the top of the window in common.
- Clear all Lights - Doesn’t need much explanation. Since LightWave always requires at least one light in the scene, a single Default light, in its default position will replace all the lights in your scene. This action cannot be undone.
- Lights in Scene - Just an info field that tells you how many lights you have in your scene.
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The Ambient light setting from previous versions of LightWave has been removed. |
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| Light Visible to Camera |
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| Light Visible to Camera |
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Turning Cast Shadows on in the Shadows tab makes the light behave like an object casting a shadow created by other lights in the scene. Turning Cast Shadows on for a light is basically turning the light into a light blocker |
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| Affect Volumetrics |
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| Affect Volumetrics |
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Affect Volumetrics
Lights can optionally affect volumetrics for creating volumetric lighting effects or affecting volumetric primitives from the outside.
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Volumetrics require an Inv Distance ^2 falloff. In 2018, this is set by default, but if your light is not affecting volumetrics check this setting first. |
Example
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| Light MIS Samples |
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| Light MIS Samples |
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Buffer Group
See the Light Groups page.
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| Light Normalize |
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| Light Normalize |
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Converting from 2015
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| Light Conversion |
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| Light Conversion |
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