UV Eclipse


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In real life (for "real life", look 15 inches to the right), the visual appearance of the world around us, is governed by numerous light-sources, both direct (light bulbs, sun) and indirect. Direct light sources are easy to simulate in a rendering software package. Basically all render-engines are capable of calculating light and shadow casting for point lights, spotlights and parallel lights. Indirect light can also be computed fairly easily. This effect is called 'radiosity' or 'global illumination'. Radiosity is the process where digital photons that collide with digital objects are not fully absorbed, but refracted off a surface while changing colour and intensity. If this refraction is diffuse we call it 'radiosity', otherwise we call it 'caustics'.

The sky however poses a problem. The sky isn't an object, but an (endless) volume of intricate layers of gas and pollution each with it's own properties like colour, absorption, refraction and diffusion. It is rather difficult to simulate realistic skies using software, especially when it comes to clouds. The simplest solution to this is not to simulate the sky at all, but to use photographs instead. This doesn't fully solve the problem, because photographs -or image files- do not cast light. This app aims to overcome that last problem.

In a nutshell: UV Eclipse is a program that allows you to create realistic, fully panoramic lighting environments for digital rendering. The help file (which is included in the program, but can also be downloaded separately) obviously elaborates on the subject.

Buddha_Lightdome
A 3D-model with single light setup
B 3D-model with 360° lightdome setup
C 3D-model with both setups

Note that the lightdome (while it features dozens of lights) is darker than the single light in setup A. The single light acts as the sun, the lightdome acts as the sky. Once both sources are used together, the resulting image appears realistic to us.

Some of the most advanced render-engines are capable to use HDRi (High Dynamic Range images) and thus no longer need lightdomes to achieve proper environmental lighting.

HDR images are no longer based on integer (or rather byte) palettes. Instead of limiting a colour to RGB components in the range 0..255, colours can now be stored as real numbers. Allowing for colours brighter than white and darker than black. HDR shop is a freeware package that can load, save and edit HDR images.


Since UV Eclipse is a stand-alone application instead of a plugin for a specific 3D-package, you also need importer scripts or plugins when you intend to use it. Importers have been written for Rhinoceros, 3D Studio Max, Maya and AutoCAD. The helpfile features information on how to code your own importers.


 

For additional information.