Although defining our goals for this chapter is probably not as important an exercise as with our previous hands-on lighting work, it would still be good to put something down in writing that can help us understand how the effort we put into this chapter will benefit us in our photorealistic rendering endeavors.

Our goal this time around is to make sure that by the end of the chapter we understand at least the basics of a number of aspects of the way light behaves in the real world. Taking the time to do so will hopefully help make us much more efficient in our use of the lighting tools available in V-Ray. At the same time, we will also gain a measure of technical insight into how a number of V-Ray tools are working. This will, in turn, help us produce work of a higher standard than would have been possible without such knowledge. If we can accomplish these things by the conclusion of this chapter, then we will be well on our way to not only being a skilled render artist...