Merging Lights

Questions & Answers
1

Consider I have two point light’s of the same type which have their own atrributes i.e. intensity, colour, range etc…
At the moment I am using public float getArea(Light l){return l.intensity* l.range} as the weights for the lights.

Therefore, a single light to approximate the two would look something like:

Light light1Comp = light1.GetComponent<Light>();
Light light2Comp = light2.GetComponent<Light>();
float light1Area =getArea(light1Comp );
float light2Area = getArea(light2Comp );
float totalArea= light1Area +light2Area;

GameObject lightGameObject = new GameObject();
lightGameObject.transform.position= (light1.transform.position *light1Area+light2.transform.position * light2Area)/totalArea;
Light lightComp = lightGameObject.AddComponent<Light>();
float combinedIntensity = light1Comp.intensity + light2Comp.intensity;
lightComp.colour = (((light1Comp.colour * light1Area) + (light2Comp.colour * light2Area)) / totalArea);
lightComp.intensity =combinedIntensity ;
lightComp.range = totalArea / combinedIntensity;

It seems like this approximation is not so good though, am I missing something? are intensities non-linear?

here are some images to show what is happening

This image uses unmerged lights
91828-rsz-1capture.png

This image uses merged lights
91829-rsz-capture2.png

2

From the documentation:

The intensity diminishes with distance
from the light, reaching zero at a
specified range. Light intensity is
inversely proportional to the square
of the distance from the source. This
is known as ‘inverse square law’ and
is similar to how light behaves in the
real world.

3

What really helped me was checking the camera HDR option.