Directional Light

Directional Light is a function that is most useful for shedding uniform light over a large area of the design. The incident light beams are parallel and therefore this is a close representation of natural sunlight. The illustration below demonstrates the effect of directional light.

pCon.planner_directional_01

Creation

The following is how to insert a source of directional light:

1.It is best to switch to the appropriate 2D projection, depending on the direction you wish to set.

2.Go to the Lighting area in the Room group, Start tab, and select Directional Light.

3.Use one click to set the origin for the light source.

4.Moving the mouse or entering figures on the keyboard enables you to determine the orientation and size of the graphic representation of the directional light.

5.Clicking again or confirming with the Enter key ends the creation stage.

Properties

There are a number of properties which can be edited for a directional light source. The screenshot below shows a marked directional light source in the Front projection together with its properties.

pCon.planner_directional_02

Property	Description	Can be changed by means of
Type	A Directional light can be converted into a Point light, a Spotlight or an Area light	Properties Editor
Color Temperature	The Color Temperature defines whether a light source emits a warm or a cold light. It is specified in Kelvin (K). Lower K values make the light appear warm, higher values make the light appear cold.	Properties Editor
Color	Sets the color of the light	Properties Editor
Luminosity	The figure is given in candelas (cd). 1 cd is approximately the Intensity of the light from one candle. The intensity of Directional Light is constant.	Properties Editor
Angular Size	The larger the source of light, the softer the shadow in the image rendered. For the effect to be visible in real-time display, the Shadow Quality, Render Settings, Quality tab) has to be set to High.
Realtime Shadows	Enables or disables the calculation of shadows for realtime rendering	Properties Editor
Light enabled	This switches the light source on and off	Properties Editor
Shadows	This is whether Shadows should be calculated during the rendering process or not	Properties Editor
Name	It is possible to give a name to any of the light sources	Properties Editor
Target	The target interactor will set the direction of the directional light. There is a difference here from the spot light. The dot is not the actual target of the source but simply one of two points describing the direction of the incident light (see image).	Interactor (see image)
Origin	The origin interactor allows the position of the origin to be changed. There is again a difference here from the spot light. It is not the actual origin of the source but simply one of two points describing the direction of the incident light (see image).	Interactor (see image)
Position	It is possible to move the directional light	Section of line (see image)

Program help

Directional Light