The simulation results use a modeled “Light Source” to shade the piece appears to come from the top of the screen…this works fine. However, when you rotate the simulation, it appears that the light source rotates with it. In other words, if it renders with the light source at “12:00” and then you rotate the simulation 90 degrees, the light source seems to now be at “3:00”.
The virtual light source provides contrast that allows you to see things like carving depth. However, since the light source moves, you cannot “shed light” on different areas of the piece.
For example:
This is a rendering of a texture which has consistent depth across the entire piece. You can see how the lighting is coming from the top and creating shadows that are deeper at the bottom of the simulation. The top is “washed out”:
So…to see the depth of the top half, I rotated the piece 180 degrees:
But now you can see that the lighting rotated as well, and is now coming from the bottom - and the washout is still obscuring the depth of the cutting.
This indicates that the simulation creates an image and then you’re rotating, zooming, etc. the image itself. Is there a way to get the simulation to render again, with the piece rotated? Or to position the light source independently?
There is a request for this (similar) from 2022, Here
If there’s no way to do this today, I’ll register this in the “Feature Requests” section.
- Gary