This section present light objects (NOT Light modeling objects).
The Light node simulates a directional light source and can be placed into the scene similarly to primitive objects. It controls the direction, intensity, and color of the light that affects the appearance of surfaces and shadows in the scene.
Common attributes of a Light node include:
All light types (except the Sun sky) can be set to shadowless mode, disabling shadow casting. Rays can be vizualized and adjusted.
The Sky object in GroIMP represents the sky environment and ambient lighting and can be placed into the scene similarily to primitive objects. In the wireframe view, it is displayed as a sphere whose position does not affect the scene because it represents a sky sphere at infinity.
Visual effects of the Sky object are not visible in wireframe mode, use POV-Ray to get a ray-traced image which makes use of these objects.
Sensors in GroIMP can be used to estimate the power of the rays send by one of the ray tracers without interacting with theses rays. Therefore it allows observation without interference.
Every image used within a GroIMP project, e.g., a colouring texture of a 3D material, is shown in the Image Explorer. All file formats which are supported by your installation of the Java Image I/O Framework are readable, these are at least Portable Network Graphics (`png`), JPEG and Graphics Interchange Format (`gif`).
A shader is a component that implements a *local illumination model* in GroIMP, defining how light interacts with the surface of an object. The local illumination model is the theoretical framework that describes how incoming light is absorbed, reflected, or transmitted by surfaces at a local point. A shader is the concrete implementation of this model, encoded as an object or class in GroIMP that controls these optical properties for rendering and simulation purposes.
It specifies the optical properties such as absorption, reflection, transmission, and the scattering behavior of light rays on that surface.