   Point Light Origin in shader?
  Hello,Pretty easy question.I just started integrating point lights into my renderer, and was curious about how the origin of a point light is represented. In every example I see it is represented by a bright spot, but does a standard BRDF lighting equation, which is what my directional light uses, produce this? or is it a special case? Thanks!Joe[Edited by - AverageJoeSSU on May 7, 2009 12:57:56 PM]
  The fact that the point light is represented by a point is an approximation.  It simplifies the math to determine how much of the light is incident onto a surface based on the normal vector and the vector to the light.There are many algorithms for using area lights if you want to have a light that is larger than a point.  However, they are significantly less fast, and don't produce much better results in most cases.   ;  interesting, thanks.   