June 25 2009
In a free moment I was playing around with the iridescent coating feature of my PhysicalMaterial shader when I noticed I hadn’t posted an example of this feature yet, so here we go.
Notice the soap-like coating around the statue. This somewhat uncommon optical phenomenon is called iridescence and is, to quote Wikipedia, “caused by multiple reflections from multi-layered, semi-transparent surfaces in which phase shift and interference of the reflections modulates the incident light (by amplifying or attenuating some frequencies more than others)”.
Right.
Anyway, I built it into my shader because Maxwell’s shading system offers the feature and that’s what my shader is based on.
Not that I have the slightest idea what I would personally use this effect for at the moment, but I’m sure it has its uses in some productions.
May 1 2009
This advanced light shader is designed to be physically accurate in its base configuration but can be easily modified for artistic effect.
PhysicalLight is meant to work with PhysicalCamera — simply set the lens shader to a realistic photographic exposure and your PhysicalLights will render as you would expect realistic lights within the scale of your scene.
Unlike most light shaders in biased rendering engines, PhysicalLight does not take arbitrary input values: Instead, you can enter (or choose from a useful range of presets) your light’s color temperature and luminance in watts, which actually correlates to real world values. The shader supports area lights, soft shadows and IES profiles for even more realistic effects.
PhysicalLight was modeled after Maxwell’s light model to ensure the utmost physical accuracy while at the same time providing quick render times.
Usage
PhysicalLight can be used to realistically simulate artificial light sources such as electric bulbs, candle flames and fluorescent tubes.
