distant light

dot_bat

question_ is a distant light is a omni directional light? it lights the scene equally in all directions? in xxxxxxxthis small example i have one distant light but it is behaving as a directional light is this correct?

Jonstark

No it's not omni directional, it's infinite in one direction (and you can easily spot the direction based on the arrow icon for the distant light). Think of it as coming from an infinitely flat plane that stretches across the sky, but the plane is pointed in one specific direction, so the light strength never falls off and comes from a large expanse, but it is falling in one specific direction.

The omni directonal light would be the bulb light, but it isn't infinite and the light will fall off over distance.

Also you could take an spherical object and attach an 'anything glows' light to it, and it would also be omnidirectional (from the sphere outwards in all directions), but again it wouldn't be infinite.

Headwax

hi a distant light is a directional light

for an all directions light you would generally use a ' bulb' , if you want it to light up a small universe you will need to change the distance it travels from the usual 400 feet

on the other hand
a distant light will go forever

don't forget to drop your ambient down to zero (vis the Scene component over on the left)

sorry Jonstark beat me to it :)

Jonstark

head wax said:

sorry Jonstark beat me to it :)

Heheh, I'm usually not quick enough (or knowledgeable enough) to answer most questions, but that one I knew! So I typed like the wind, because I knew others would answer that one soon :)

dot_bat

thanx johnstark and headwax, for some reason i thought it behaved like ambient lite

evilproducer

To get light coming into the universe from all directions, as opposed to radiating out, like a bulb light, the best method may be to use an HDRI or image in the Scene's background and enable the Skylight in the render room.

To fake it, you could create a sphere and replicate distant lights on it.

dot_bat

thanx for that. i do use hdri and the like. its just been a while since i picked up carrara and for some reason thought the distant lite was omni directional.

evilproducer

I figured you knew about HDRIs, but there's a lot of new users here since C8.5 was released so I figured it wouldn't hurt to go into a bit of additional detail for their benefit as well.