Light radiates from center of Prim, not the prim itself

Maybe this has been covered, or was covered in the Preview.


I made a Torus, 10m diameter, thinking it would be like a great big light.

But, it appears that the light actually comes from the where the center of the torus would be, not from the prim itself.

I rezzed a sphere and moved it around, watching the shadow and the light was just from pinpoint source.

Oh well, I'm a little dissapointed, so wanted to whine

Want to be more depressed?

Make a big box and put your light in the box.

Now look at all the shadows cast by the light leaking through the walls of the box.

Area lights and soft shadows are the most demanding features of light in computer graphics. Only best raytracers can render them good but it's often made with array of point light sources. For big torus there would need to be at least 100 lights to make it look good. So area lights in realtime - impossible.