Architectural_Design_with_SketchUp

Architectural Design with SketchUp
Figure 5.41: Sun illumination to enhance facade detail
Rendering software is usually capable of doing this. The only drawback
is a potentially longer render time. If soft shadows are not enabled
by default, look in your rendering software for settings related to the
sun’s radius (or something similar)—a larger-diameter light source produces
softer shadows.
Omnidirectional Lights
Among the artificial light sources, omnidirectional lights—often called
omni lights—are usually the simplest ones to work with. As long as the
light is placed correctly in 3D space, all the information that is needed
for it to work is its light intensity and color.
An omnidirectional light can be imagined as a point light that emits
light particles from its location with equal intensity in all directions. A
common use for these lights is therefore as lightbulbs in lamp fixtures.
Another use case can be as a fill light in a dark area of a rendering; if
you have an area that is quite dark given the light sources used, you can
add a low-intensity omni light in that area (taking care to avoid unnatural
shadows) to enhance detail.
Being a point light, the omni light by default creates hard and precise
Figure 5.42: The sun’s shadows: (1) close shadows
are sharp; (2) distant shadows are soft; (3) shadows. This may not be desirable in a particular rendering because
shaded areas in shadows are also soft.
natural light produces soft shadows. Therefore, rendering software usually
includes the ability to create soft shadows by representing the point
light as a sphere with a given diameter.
In some situations you may not want omni lights to produce shadows at all—for example,
when using them as fill lights. In such cases, some rendering software adds the capability to
turn off shadows on a light-by-light basis.
It is advantageous to use a studio-type setting to evaluate light properties. Therefore,
in our present discussion we mainly use the studio setup shown in Figure 5.43 for rigging
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