# New type of lighting system, Photonic

**URL:** <https://blenderartists.org/t/new-type-of-lighting-system-photonic/560318>\
**Category:** Blender and CG Discussions\
**Created:** [December 23, 2012, 3:50pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/new-type-of-lighting-system-photonic/560318 "2012-12-23T15:50:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![BluePrintRandom](https://blenderartists.org/user_avatar/blenderartists.org/blueprintrandom/32/598195_2.png) [@BluePrintRandom](https://blenderartists.org/u/BluePrintRandom)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2012, 3:50pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/new-type-of-lighting-system-photonic/560318/1 "2012-12-23T15:50:12Z")

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I have been able to approximate a photonic render based on particles to make emission,

I have been able to approximate what it may look like using volumetrics, and using a point density based on

A. a dense cone-Flash light halo that is a mesh - makes convincing “Halo” but casts no shadow and can only make emmissions happen in a cone…

B. a hose type particle emitter and extreme stickyness on the surfaces"lit" by the particles radius, what I was thinking is if the volume could re-emit the particle and be lit by it, but right now this only lights a single bounce.

if it could pick up color off a bounce, leave behind illumination, and have less energy on the next bounce and leave behind the previous color, for each bounce, you could make a particle based rendering method.

Another method is dynamic painting each surface with particles that are emitted by your “Light” and making a dynamic emission map from the data, this works but I think I am doing it the hard-way using PaintCache.png-\>sequencer-\>.mp4-\>emission map, I think it could be done with nodes much easier but I am having trouble wrapping my brain around it…

Help? I think a particle based volumetric render could be considered “Photonic”

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**Author:** ![m9105826](https://blenderartists.org/user_avatar/blenderartists.org/m9105826/32/6760_2.png) [@m9105826](https://blenderartists.org/u/m9105826)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2012, 3:54pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/new-type-of-lighting-system-photonic/560318/2 "2012-12-23T15:54:07Z")

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Mitsuba has a mode that approximates like this I believe. It is incredibly slow and is really only there as a proof of concept.

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**Author:** ![BluePrintRandom](https://blenderartists.org/user_avatar/blenderartists.org/blueprintrandom/32/598195_2.png) [@BluePrintRandom](https://blenderartists.org/u/BluePrintRandom)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2012, 4:59pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/new-type-of-lighting-system-photonic/560318/3 "2012-12-23T16:59:29Z")

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The dynamic paint mode-\>Paintcache-\>sequencer-movie-emission was fast, except I don’t know how to turn that into code I just did it in steps,

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**Author:** ![arexma](https://blenderartists.org/user_avatar/blenderartists.org/arexma/32/8278_2.png) [@arexma](https://blenderartists.org/u/arexma)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2012, 5:20pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/new-type-of-lighting-system-photonic/560318/4 "2012-12-23T17:20:30Z")

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I’ve no idea what you’re actually talking about, but basically you describe the idea of photon mapping, which is around for a decade now.

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**Author:** ![BluePrintRandom](https://blenderartists.org/user_avatar/blenderartists.org/blueprintrandom/32/598195_2.png) [@BluePrintRandom](https://blenderartists.org/u/BluePrintRandom)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2012, 6:02pm UTC](https://blenderartists.org/t/new-type-of-lighting-system-photonic/560318/5 "2012-12-23T18:02:08Z")

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Using dynamic paint to produce an emit map, possibly in real time

So Particle emiter is a brush  
Lit surfaces are canvas,  
The resulting map is used as an emission map, but this only works with baking, I was thinking some type of shader might do it in real time.