Computer Graphics from Scratch

3LIGHT

We’ll start adding “realism” to our rendering of the scene by introducing light. Light is a vast and complex topic, so we’ll present a simplified model that is good enough for our purposes. This model is, for the most part, inspired by how light works in the real world, but it also takes some liberties with the aim of making the rendered scenes look good.

We’ll start with some simplifying assumptions that will make our lives easier, then we’ll introduce three types of light sources: point lights, directional lights, and ambient light. We’ll end the chapter by discussing how these lights affect the appearance of surfaces, including diffuse ...