@60hz -- May I ask, do you have some advice for using [of.arealight], for example?

I just tried to draw a sphere with an [of.arealight] in the patch, and the only effect of the lighting is to make the sphere darker. I don't see any sort of shading for the shape's contour.

But, your of.arealight help patch does show at least some translucency(?) effects...

A bit pressed for time today, not much leeway to experiment with it, so I thought I'd ask what is the "right" way to set it up?

hjh

Yes, traditionnal lights in openGl are not easy to understand, and maybe a bit deprecated now (if I am not mistaken, glsl lights have better results...). I read on the openframeworks forum that area lights only have some effects with openGl set > 3, more infos here:

https://forum.openframeworks.cc/t/understanding-oflight/26230/3

@60hz

Ah OK, it turns out that the main problem was that I hadn't positioned the light far enough above the scene.

Ohhhh... and now I see why it worked right away in your help patch -- because you positioned the geos below z = 0 (with light source at z = 0). I was looking for an initializer for the light position, but that wasn't it at all.

Gracious, I'm bad at this

hjh

There are still a bug with lights... for example the light is following camera orientation, if you change camera orientation you will notice it...