Report on render light qualities - an exercise

[Dwight]

I have just finished this exercise for my book. It illustrates some interesting issues. Disregard the colors.....

this uses lite grey and dark grey checkers - only the floating bars are white.
Cone shows as facets even at 124 segments.

LHS= radiosity from un-named application
MHS=raytraced from same [I do have a middle hand in case you were wondering]
RHS= LightWorks in ArchiCAD

settings in ArchiCAD:

sunobject - golden light - 25 8suns at 2 degrees
skyobject - bluish - 25 - 6 skies.
windolite as downlite from open roof at top of walls - bluish - 50 res 2 shadqual 3
ambient - white - 10

Note:
black anomaly underside white bar in lightworks - that is a white surface.

windolite is there to make softshadows under sphere to give gradient effect to shado.

1024 pixels - 6 minutes.

Please comment.

[Dwight]

There's more! I felt the raytracing had failed me on the underside of the sphere, so I added a windolite as a uplite - right on the ground.

I'm sure that many users will be dismayed at the elaborate number and kind of lights required for this exercise. I know that I am.

rendertime now 7 minutes.

[Dwight]

and now we add a soft downlight to enhance the sun and we get proper graded shadows.

This shot has:

sun object
sky object
gold windolite up under sphere
downlite from sun angle