Lights
By default Ornatrix App lights your groom with a soft ambient light so it is visible from every angle. Beyond that there are two kinds of light, and both of them light the shaded viewport preview as well as the ProRender and Cycles renderers, so the lighting you set up while grooming carries through to your render:
- Viewport lights - up to two extra lights belonging to the viewport rather than to the groom, switched on from the light-bulb icons in the corner of the viewport. They are the quickest way to give a groom shape and highlights while you work, and they are saved with the scene, so a groom keeps its lighting the next time you open it.
- Light objects - lights you create from the Create menu or toolbar. A light object is a node in the groom like any other object: it has a shape, it is moved and aimed with the transform tools, and it is saved and loaded with the groom. Use these when the lighting is part of the groom itself.
The light icons
Three light-bulb icons sit in the top-right corner of the viewport, just to the left of the orientation tripod:
- Two icons for the two viewport lights, each tinted with that light's color.
- One icon for the ambient light.
Both viewport lights are off by default and the ambient light is on. Each icon is dimmed while its light is off.
Turning lights on and off
Click a light-bulb icon to toggle that light on or off. The first time you enable a viewport light it is placed automatically, off to one side of and above the center of the view, so it lights the groom right away. Clicking the ambient icon turns the ambient light off or on; with the ambient light off the groom is lit only by whichever lights are enabled.
Adjusting a viewport light
Hover over a light-bulb icon to open its settings drop-down. For a viewport light you can set:
- Color - the light's color, which also tints its icon.
- Intensity - how bright the light is.
- Shadow Sharpness - how crisp its cast shadows are, from soft to hard. This affects the Cycles render; ProRender casts hard shadows and the shaded preview casts none.
The ambient light's drop-down exposes its color and intensity. Move the cursor away from the drop-down to close it. It stays open while the cursor is on the icon or on the drop-down itself, and while you are working in a color picker opened from it.
Aiming a viewport light
Click and drag a light-bulb icon to orbit that light around the center of the view, exactly as dragging the orientation tripod orbits the camera. This lets you position highlights and shading quickly without leaving the viewport.
Light objects
Create > Light adds a light to the groom. It is placed away from the center of the view and clear of the geometry you can see, aimed back at it, so it lights the groom as soon as it is created; move and aim it afterwards with the transform tools like any other object. A light emits along its negative Z axis, the same convention a camera looks along.
A light object has these properties:
- Type - the shape of the light source: Point, Directional, Spot or Area.
- Color - the light's color.
- Intensity - how bright the light is.
- Cone Angle and Inner Angle - for a Spot light, the outer boundary where the light has fallen off completely and the inner boundary of its full-intensity region. The light falls off smoothly between them.
- Area Width and Area Height - for an Area light. Not used yet, see below.
- Cast Shadows - whether the light casts shadows.
The properties a light's type does not use are dimmed, so you only ever adjust what applies. Switching a light's node off, or deleting it, removes it from the lighting.
What each renderer uses
Not every renderer can honor every property. The table below is what each of them does with a light; the same applies to both kinds of light, except that a viewport light is always a point light.
| Shaded | Raytraced (ProRender) | Realistic (Cycles) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Point, Directional, Spot | yes | yes | yes |
| Area | drawn as a point light | drawn as a point light | drawn as a point light |
| Area Width, Area Height | not used | not used | not used |
| Cast Shadows | no shadows are cast | ignored, shadows are always cast | yes |
| Shadow Sharpness (viewport lights) | no shadows are cast | ignored, shadows are hard | yes |
Intensity and distance
The three renderers measure light very differently: ProRender and Cycles are physically based and a light's brightness falls off with the square of the distance, while the shaded preview does not attenuate at all. Ornatrix App reconciles them so that one intensity value reads as about the same brightness in all three: the raytracers compensate their falloff against the light's distance to the center of the view. An intensity of 1 therefore lights the middle of your groom at roughly the same level wherever you look at it, and moving a light further away does not simply make it disappear.
Within a render the falloff is still physical, so a light placed close to the groom lights the near side much more strongly than the far side, and one placed further away lights it more evenly.
See also Viewport Navigation and Display, Rendering with ProRender, Rendering with Cycles and Supported Render Engines.