
1. Physically Based Area Lights 87
Figure 1.18. Disk area light fit to Phong distribution.
where p
d
is a point on the light plane with normal n
l
and r is the distance away
from the light.
To simplify, we assume that occlusion does not influence the result. Then the
integral can be pre-computed in a 3D lookup table indexed by p
d
.xy coordinates
in the light space and by distance r between points p and p
d
. The distance can
be normalized against the maximum distance at which computing the integral
still makes a visual difference. Such a distance maximum can be calculated by
solving the light shape’s solid angle (equation (1.3)) for r, irrespective of cosθ
o
,