OTOY Forums

I would be interested in the ability to "focus" a lights projection along a continuum. Currently light is emitted fundamentally in all directions from the normal (as real lights do) if I understand correctly.

But what if we could weight the ray direction based on surface normal 0=multidirectional 1=perpendicular to surface.

Mainly I see this being used to creating perfectly parallel spot lights but could also create interesting effects for mesh based lighting.

Even with how far as rendering has come in the last decade or so, which is truly mind boggling, I do miss a lot of the fakes that used to be our bread and butter, like ubiquitous "directional lights," and "environmental reflection" texture maps.

As far as I know this can already be done with the distribution channel. There is also a Spotlight Texture to create a texture for this.

I recently saw this video from Silverwing which uses Octane Sky to add multiple distant/effectively parallel lights using gradient nodes. It's a little cumbersome to set up, compared to just using distant spotlights, but it's also quite elegant in its own way. I was thinking it would be fairly easy to link the Transform controls to appropriate geometry/curves for more direct, intuitive aiming in world space. You could build a Sky rig with half a dozen pre-built directional lights on it and keep it in your toolbox.
https://youtu.be/535cMPQjv3g

elsksa wrote:Haven't seen the video yet but it reminds me of this technique from this page

It's a similar idea, but using layered gradient nodes in a procedurally generated HDR environment texture to generate multiple light sources. One advantage over just using the Sun light in a black sky is that these lights work perfectly well when rotated below the horizon.