Lights (was Re: 64 bit version of Quesa)

[James W. <ja...@fr...>]

Roger Holmes wrote (on 2/17/07):

> I would like to go back to being able to store lights in display groups,
> preferably so that when their group gets submitted, they get added
> to the light group so that I would no longer have to do a pre-pass
> to read all the lights and add them to the light group myself with
> their correct transforms and then afterward remove them from the
> light group. Lights are real things in the real world, we do not need
> to do anything with them until EndRender time, so why do they
> have to be known before StartRender time?

While I agree that it would be nice to be able to have lights anywhere 
in the scene, I don't know how to do it without two passes.

I don't know what you mean by "go back to being able to store lights in 
display groups".  When was this possible?  The QD3D manual says: "A 
display group is a group of objects that are drawable. Drawable objects
include geometric objects, styles, transforms, attributes and attribute 
sets, and other display groups."  No mention of lights.

In answer to the question "why do they have to be known before 
StartRender time", my answer is: because any OpenGL-based renderer needs 
to have the lights set up before you render anything that should be lit 
by said lights.
-- 
   James W. Walker, Innoventive Software LLC
   <http://www.frameforge3d.com/>