Could you add at texture and just increase the directionality to get a similar result?
Yes. Sun is very much just directional spotlight :- ).
I would like to caution people about the result of this technique though. There are two types of
dappled lights commonly used in photography:
1) Gobo Lights: A tiny spotlight in box with Gobo mask. The light needs to be strongly directional (small and powerful) as the distance between light source and Gobo Mask is relatively small. A Gobo mask added to CoronaLight or CoronaSun would need to feature virtual "distance" parameter.
2) Dappled light from Sun resulting from occluding objects like Curtain or Trees. And here is the main difference... these shadows exist because sun is at great distance from occluding object.
How varried and soft/strong dappled shadows look depends completely on that distance between occlusion (Tree) and light-source (Sun). Because the distance varries (Trees are 3D-dimensional) you get that beautiful variation, on/off look, etc.
If CoronaSun somehow integrated Gobo-Mask similar to Spotlight, it would never produce this result anyway. It would simply produce the exact result a Spotlight with Gobo-Mask does.
And I used a lot of trick to boost that technique, like using motion-blurred Gobo Masks. It's not the same.
Creating Opacity-Mapped planes
is not inferior technique. It will always be necessary to achieve the simulation of what happens in reality. Light is always defined by space.
Here is funny WIP from my current project. In order to get what I want, there is exact and complicated 3D setup of Curtains, Trees, Cannopies and Occlusion Boxes outside of what camera sees. Single light source with flate gobo mask, virtually mapped at some distance would not give you this.
« Last Edit: 2023-06-30, 17:28:46 by Juraj »
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