Light
This section present light objects (NOT Light modeling objects).
Light sources
A LightNode in GroIMP works similar to light socket where different lights can be “screwed” into.
The Light 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.
All light types (except the SunskyShaders) can be set to shadowless mode, disabling shadow casting. Rays can be vizualized and adjusted.
Sky models
GroIMP provides different models for sky-light simulation and ambient light
Sensors
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.
Images
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`).
Shader
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.