Lighting

A Voyager scene comes with a default environmental light. However, existing lights and their shadows can be edited and additional light sources can be introduced.

Summary

Default Scene Lighting

By default, a Voyager scene includes an environment light that simulates the lighting of a photo studio. Two directional lights named “Shadow casters”, initially disabled, are already set up to easily cast a shadow on a floor.

Existing light sources are visible in the Navigator pannel (top left) :

illustration Navigator lights

Editing existing lights

There are two ways to edit lights :

To edit the a light’s settings, click on the Settings task in the top navigation bar. Then, select the light source you want to edit in the Navigator pannel on the left side. Below the Navigator pannel, the Task tab now displays all available settings for the selected light, including its position, color, intensity, and its shadow parameters.

Editing the environment Light

The environment light has only one setting : its intensity. You cannot rotate it, or change its color. It cannot cast any shadows. However it is heavily influenced by the environment map. It is currently possible to chose between three environment maps using the environment tool or changing the MapIndex scene setting (Environment > Environment > MapIndex). The environment map can be rottated in the scene settings (Environment > Environment > Rotation)

If you do not want to use the environment light, you can disable it by using the Settings task and setting “enabled” to off.

Shadows using the default “Shadow caster” lights

statue without shadows statue with shadows

The default Voyager scene comes with two “Shadow Caster” lights. These lights are set up to contribute very little to the overall light intensity, but still project shadows. (See directional lights for more details)

To use them:

Note: By default, lights follow camera movements. Therefore, if you turn the camera around the object, the shadows will always stretch on the same side compare to your view point. This can be edited in scenes settings in Orbit Navigation > LightsFollowCam.

Custom light sources

Warning

Be careful about editing lights in scenes with already defined tours and annotations. If lights are parts of the properties tracked in tours snapshot configuration, adding or removing lights breaks the scene, preventing further saves. Ideally, lighting should be defined before creating annotations or tours. If a light source is no longer necessary, it can be turned off (by setting “Enabled” to off) instead of deleted.

How to add a light

To add a light, use the “+” button on the right side of the “Lights” in the Navigator pannel (top left) :

illustration Navigator lights

Then select the appropriate type of light and enter a name for this light source. Press “Create Light”.

Types of light

There are six different types of lights available to be added. Each of them is detailed below with an illustration using only one light source. These light sources do not use the environment map. This leads to metallic parts on the statue used as exemples looking very dark. For best results, these should be used with the environment light.

Most light types are influenced by their position. To move a light source, use their position and rotation parameters in their transform matrix.

Note By default, lights follow camera movements. For example, a left-oriented secondary light will always illuminate the left of the Explorer, regardless of whether you are viewing the front or back of the object. This can be edited in Scenes Settings > Orbit Navigation > LightsFollowCam.

  Light Type exemple shadows
Ambient Light - ❌
Hemisphere Light Sky and ground ❌
Directional Light Sun ✅
Spot Light Spotlight ✅
Point Light Light bulb ✅
Rectangle (rect) Light Windows ❌

Ambient Light

statue without shadows

This light uniformly illuminates all objects in the scene equally. It cannot be used to cast shadows as it does not have a direction. Settings :

Hemisphere Light

statue without shadows

A light source positioned above the scene, with color fading from the sky color to the ground color. This light cannot be used to cast shadows.

Settings :

Directional Light

statue without shadows

A light emitted in a specific direction. This light will behave as though it is infinitely far away and the rays produced from it are all parallel. The common use case for this is to simulate daylight; the sun is far enough away that its position can be considered to be infinite, and all light rays coming from it are parallel. This light can cast shadows. It is equivalent to the “Sun light” in Blender.

With some specific settings, this is the type used for the default “Shadow casters”. These have a very low light intensity of 0.01 (to avoid contributing additional light to the environment light) and very high shadow intensity of 50 or 60 (to still project a visible shadow).

Settings :

Spot Light

spot light illustrationspot light illustration with gizmo

This light gets emitted from a single point in one direction, along a cone that increases in size the further from the light it gets. This light can cast shadows.

Settings :

Point Light

statue without shadows

A light that gets emitted from a single point in all directions. A common use case for this is to replicate the light emitted from a bare lightbulb. This light can cast shadows.

Settings :

Rectangle (rect) Light

statue without shadows

This light emits uniformly across the face a rectangular plane. This light type can be used to simulate light sources such as bright windows or strip lighting. This is the equivalent of an “Area light” in Blender.

Settings :

The size of the rectangle can be edited using the scale parameters of the transform. Do NOT set any scale to 0.