I'm sure you have heard by now that AutoCAD 2007 has gotten a major overhaul in its 3D Modeling capabilities. These changes wouldn't make much difference if they didn't improve lighting, materials and rendering as well. In this posting I take a look at some of the new lighting improvements at a very basic level.
AutoCAD 2007 supports 4 different types of light sources (5 if you are going to count default lighting). The four different types of lights are Point, Spotlight, Distant and Sun light. Point, Spotlight, and Distant lights were all available in previous releases of AutoCAD that supported rendering (all the way back to R13). Point lights are lights that emit light in all directions, and are similar to a candle or a common household light bulb and as the light moves further away from the source it gets dimmer. A spotlight, would be similar to a flash light as it emits in a specific direction and as the light gets further away from the source it gets dimmer.
- Point light
- Distant light
Distant lights are lights that emit light along a specified vector, but the light does not get dimmer the further away from the source that it gets. A distant light would be similar to the sun, the angle and direction affects how the light is emitted. Sunlight is really a specific distant light that allows you to control the time and day of the sun, and its position through longitudinal and latitudinal values. All lights can be selected in the model using the Lights in Model palette or in some cases light with the point and spotlights can be selected and manipulated directly in the model using grips.
That is about all the time I have for now on lights, until next time.