Scene Lighting

Scene lighting consists in setting up the lighting in a scene with Light source for lighting objects and Sky for ambient lighting.


Light Source	Icon	Description
Color Point Light (1)		Lighting the scene from one defined location and illuminate in all directions. Point light has a defined color, position, pointing direction and a defined angular distribution. The light intensity varies according to the spectrum and its angular distribution. (Option to cast shadows) Use ONLY with CAD engines. See also Color Light.
Color Directional Light (1)		Lighting all objects equally from a given direction. A directional light is like an area of light of infinite size and infinite distance from the scene. There is shading, but no distance falloff. (Option to cast shadows) Use ONLY with CAD engines. See also Color Light.
Physical Point Light (2)		Lighting the scene from one defined location and illuminate in all directions. Point light has a defined color, position, pointing direction and a defined angular distribution. The light intensity varies according to the spectrum and its angular distribution. (Option to cast shadows) Use with Shadics.
Physical Directional Light (2)		Lighting the all objects equally from a given direction. (Option to cast shadows) Use with Shadics. See also Physical Light.
Physical Surface Source (2)		Modeling a surface emission light by adding a surface source to a material part. Surface light sources are useful to simulate screens. (Option to cast shadows) Use with Shadics. See also Physical Light.

Note: ⁽¹⁾ Color lights are non-physical lights that emit diffusively a colored light, used only in CAD rendering for ultra-fast rendering, shaping and tolerance assessment.

⁽²⁾ Physical lights are described by their emission spectrum and ray diagram (also called angular distribution, the ray diagram is a polar diagram that shows the luminous intensity distribution of a light source according to the observing direction). Physical lights are used in physics-based Rendering engines (Shadics).


Sky	Icon	Description
Natural Sky		Lighting the scene with an ambient light that casts shadows. See also Sky Edition.
HDRI Sky		Inserting an HDRI image that is mapped all around the scene in order to: provide the realistic feeling of a scene being integrated in a real environment, produce an ambient lighting with the fixed-intensity and fixed-color light sources that equally impact all the scene elements. Note: HDRI does not cast shadows. See also Sky.