Depth Cued Lighting

Enables normal lights and spotlights lights to be configured so that their illumination strength is dependent upon their distance in the scene.

Depth Cued Lighting is an advanced feature for experienced users who want fine control over lighting. Note that it is very easy to generate a "black" image if it is not set up correctly. Therefore it is turned OFF by default.

There are two components to using Depth Cued Lighting:

1) Enable Depth Cued Lighting by checking the Attenuate check box in the Light Settings dialog.

If the Attenuate box is checked, the light is shown with a dotted circle surrounding it. The dotted circle around the light shows the location at which the light intensity has fallen to half its given value. By default this is a radius of 10 units. Its size can be increased or decreased by scaling the light in the same way that scaling a spotlight adjusts the angle of the spotlight cone. This radius can also be set manually on the Light Scale time line or by choosing the "Light Parameters" item from the light context menu. The Attenuation Range 50% value specifies the sixe of the dotted circle.

 

2) Light Attenuation Factors - Increasing the Linear parameter causes the light to fall to a lower value at the location of the dotted circle. Increasing the Quadratic factor causes the light to fall off very rapidly outside the dotted circle. For example, Attenuation values of Constant=1.0, Linear=1.0, and Quadratic=2.0 produce a very limited light range.