Lights are used to illuminate objects in a Scene. How lights and materials are used in a Scene makes a big difference in the appearance of a rendered Scene. Materials define how light reflects off a surface, while direct light and ambient light levels define the light that is reflected.

When materials are used in a scene, lights are also required. A Material needs to reflect light to be visible. Without light, just the ambient part of the material is visible, which means that the object is rendered almost black with default settings. Shadows are closely related to lights. Objects that have a light-source applied on them casts a shadow in real life. Shadow mapping is a process by which shadows are added to 3D scenes in Viz Artist for more realistic images, see Shadow Maps.

The following chapters apply to the Classic Render Pipeline only. To get information about how lights are used in the Viz Engine Render Pipeline, please see Lights and Shadows in Viz.

This section contains information on the following topics:

• Types Of Light
• Light Source Animation
• Light Editor
• Light Visualization
• Shadow Maps