linear lights center hotspot

[Ernest Burden III]

I am putting a linear light under a bar so that it washed light down the fron surface. I first went with a square spotlight with its aspect ratio changed to make it a rectangle. It had a hotspot in the middle. I guess that makes sense. I was using it since I only needed light to go down, and not up. So I moved on the a tube light, which the manual says has a correctly modeled illumination (bu 17 specular points--go figure) but it STILL showed a very strong light at the center vs the ends. THAT'S not what you woule expect. I played with map sizes, all sorts of things. I went to an area light (the slowest to render) and it still showed the brighter center, but it was better overall, and it required a map blurring of 20, the max size to avoid a noticeably banded pattern across the bar front.

 

Does anyone see any problem with how I'm sdoing this? Shouldn't a tube light have even illum along its length?

[leed]

Is it possible to use parallel lights assigned to the bar front only.

are you using radiosity, if you are you could put an object in with the luminance up high set to not visible to the camera.

you could use a series of smaller lights or instances of one light) set along a spline.

hope this helps

 

Lee