CompuServe Thread

#Lighting Model

3 messages in this thread
#180014From: Peter KableJul 13, 1995 10:41 PM
Can anyone help with a way of simulating the location of the sun and testing to see where reflections from other elements will fall? Specifically we are designing a retail outlet and wish to know whether the building on the opposite side of the street will cause reflections into our clients tenancy. Thanks in anticipation Peter Kable Geyer Design Melbourne, Australia.
#180093From: Jeremy Hubbell [Adesk]Jul 14, 1995 10:25 AM
Peter, If you're trying to simulate radiossity(bounced light), you may be in for a challenge. 3DS does not calculate bounced light. However, it can be faked quite well. To get the angle of the sun, there are a few programs out there that do it. There's a routine from Greg Pyros called Sol Track which will generate a sun path based on geographic location and time of year. You can then have a spotlight move along that path to analyze where the sunlight will fall on your model. Based on the angle of the surface the light is hitting, you could trace a vector from the surface to your model. That vector would be the light and its target path that you'd use to simulate the bounced light. If you plan on doing this quite a bit, you might want to think about writing a script to help automate this process. It would certainly make animating this process much easier! Jh
#180493From: Peter KableJul 17, 1995 3:31 AM
Jeremy, Thanks for the tip. PK