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rhino:softgilightingusinglightdomes [2016/01/20]
 rhino:softgilightingusinglightdomes [2020/08/14] (current)
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 +====== How to Get Soft GI Lighting Using Lightdomes in Flamingo======
 +Check out the formatting tips on the right for help formatting and making links.
 +
 +
 +**Rendering with lightdomes**
 +
 +
 +There has been a lot asked and shown on the Flamingo Newsgroup about lightdomes.  Personally I wouldn't be without them (until someone adds GI to Flamingo).  Needless to say I've learned a lot about using these things over the last few years. So here are a few snippets to help folks along (previously unreleased material follows..)  I will come back and add and amend as and when I have time.
 +
 +**Soft GI lighting using lightdomes**
 +
 +First, all comments below relate to lightdomes using point lights.
 +
 +One of the big problems with lightdomes is shadow artifacts.  One way to solve this problem is to use a larger number of lights, but anyone who has tried this approach knows that its impact on render times can be extreme. And even then it doesn't completely solve the problem.
 +
 +
 +For me a more successful route is to use **Source Radius**.  To access this you need to have soft shadows turned on and may need V1.1 SR4 or V2.
 +
 +**How to do it**
 +
 +Insert a lightdome by whichever means you usually do it -- David Rutten's scripts and UVe are good ways.  Start with something small so that you can see the effect easily -- I suggest 20-40 lights.  Once inserted look at the dome in plan view and roughly measure the greatest distance between two adjacent lights.
 +
 +Select the lightdome and go to **Properties** Under **Source Radius** enter the value you have just measured.  This will effectively make every point light a sphere the size you have entered. The effect of this is all the lights overlap to form one //big// light, rather than 20-40 separate lights doing their own thing.
 +
 +You can leave your samples pretty low (5 works fine, though you could try it lower..). They jitter at about 20.
 +
 +
 +Although you can still see some artifacts their effect is greatly reduced.
 +
 +Don't expect it to work in miraculously quick times - it won't. Lightdomes never do, but it will be quicker than trying to render with a lightdome with 200 lights in it.
 +
 +
 +----
 +
 +**Addendum**
 +
 +Use this technique with very few point lights to achieve more even lighting.  Try playing around with source radius and see what difference it can make.
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