No size property for point?

[Jason Finney]

I see for point light you have a size property and its shown again in the 3rd video for a bedroom scene, where has it gone, was it removed?
I get things change for programs as they update but what do we do with no size for point lights? That feels like quite the “removal” of a potentially good feature.

[Martin Bergwerf]

Hi Jason, it was not removed, but renamed to Radius.

[Jason Finney]

Is it his setup that has the default value of the size/radius to 0.82?
Mine is defaulted at 0, just curious, main reason i was confused if it was a removed features xD
ty for the quick reply btw! 😀

[Martin Bergwerf]

In 2.80 the default Size was 0.25m, which corresponds to 0.82′. When using Cycles, it was called Size and in Eevee it was called Radius.

Now it is always called Radius and the default is 0.

[Omar Domenech]

And remember that with the radius is how you control how soft or sharp your shadow is. It basically simulates the size of the light source, so the larger the source, the softer the shadow, the smaller the source, the sharper the shadow. The distance of the light from the object in the 3D viewport will also influence how soft or sharp your shadow is. 

[Jason Finney]

@dostovel Been thinking about this.
Hard to wrap my mind around since i keep thinking “But the sun is so far away yet the shadows are sharp…ish
But ig was thinking it reversed?
Would…the closer we get to the sun would the shadows get softer and softer?

The weird thing about this is the further from the ground something is the shadows seem to get softer as well. Tho ig this isnt due to the size alone anymore, rather now the distance?

[Martin Bergwerf]

Hi Jason @demonslayer112 ,

The Sun is a bit different, because it’s a directional light (‘infinitely’ far away), but with Point Lights for instance, there are, apart from the Light Rays (see also my answer to your other question where you are completely lost), Shadow Rays, cast from each shading point towards each Light and if there is something in between, it’s a shadow. The border of that shadow is sharper, when the Light is smaller, or further away, as you astutely mentioned:

This is also when the Object, casting the shadow is further away from the ground, for instance.

[Omar Domenech]

The sun is really really far away but also you have to take into consideration all the tiny particles in the sky that make the light scatter. If you lived in the Caribbean where the sun is blazing hot all the time and hardly any clouds and the sky is crystal clean and blue, you’d see your shadow is crisp all the time, perfectly sharp and not blurry. Some days when there’s clouds and stuff and you see kinda not so blue skies is when you see the shadows being soft. You can do experiments with the light from the camera in your phone and your hand or any other light source. You’ll see the way things behave in real life is how the software’s in the computer emulate, it’s just that you’ve never payed attention to all of that in real life until now that you’ve had a reason. 

[Martin Bergwerf]

all the tiny particles in the sky that make the light scatter.

Right, and because the light particles on the blue side of the visible spectrum have more energy than the ones on the red side, blue light gets scattered less, it just ‘pushes through’ the crowd of tiny particles and that is why the sky is blue, when it’s blue. Clouds however consist of water droplets, that are a lot larger that photons and therefore all visible light gets scattered evenly and that is why clouds are usually white/grey.

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