Day 18

Was back onto the pdf documentation on houdini lighting and rendering.
http://forums.odforce.net/index.php?/topic/12365-shading-documentation/

Had this link back in day 06 but failed to credit the person, so here it is, it was provided by Ben LaidlawFX. :)

I was following along up to page 03, felt it was a really good way to build up from.

Distantlight wasn't the only one which produces harsh shadows, Pointlight also does the same.

Shadows can be soften by increasing arealight's size.

There were too many specular highlights, the specular contribution checkbox is used to stop lights from contributing specular & still be able to emit diffuse light.

The projection map was a good method to find the size of the depth map size of our shadow maps. I use the default mandril image, it produced a cool mood for the overall lighting like tinted glass window.

The lights' attenuation (decay) were set to "Physically Correct" which i believe is Quadratic.



Sampling Quality is for area lights. If you see shadow noise, and for noise in projection maps it will clean this up. This number is multiplied by the Pixel Samples in the mantra rop, under the properties, sampling tabs.

All the test were done using PBR render engine.

Something to take note when setting up light rig is not to check "Keep position when parenting" under the light's Transform Tab.

After moving the null around (parent of light), i unparented them and tried to zero-out the transformation. The light ended up somewhere else in space.



Your light would had popped back to it's original coordinates upon unparenting if "Keep pos..." wasn't checked.