Request: Area Light "Spread" parameter
Loving Blender 2.8!!! One thing I notice from working with other renderers...area lights in cycles and eevee don't have a way to control how "directional" the light's rays are. In Arnold, there is a parameter called "spread" which allows you to take a standard area light and focus the rays from 0 (rays fully along light's normal Z axis) to 1 (rays fully diffused).
Check it out here: docs.arnoldrenderer.com/display/A5AFMUG/Quad+Light
Anyway, as a long-time lighter I think this would be an excellent addition to area lights in Blender.
7 Comments
For Cycles, it's possible to achieve a similar effect using shader nodes:
Blender file (2.8)
* @8vit * Thanks!! I'll give it a try.
Thanks for the setup. I could not find one i made some time ago using a youtube video. Your example works excellent for mesh lights
one issue i see, is that i get double shadows when using a texture. Is that supposed to happen?
you could try using the new IES node
This would be extremely useful
oh yes please! i even build myself a virtual softbox-grid to simulate this effect optically. but it is more perfomance intensive .