POV-Ray [plugin] (updated: 2016/Aug/08)

[micheus]

I am only familiar with YafaRay meshlights and the ones I have done are more like glow in the dark marbles... I think they are used for neon or florescent lights???

oort, did you export the scene directly from Wings to get this result?

In POV, I couldn't find a way to produce that result. When we use looks_like the object attached doesn't block light - so, no shadow.
To make a scene like yours I would need to tweak the pov file and use union - like explained here:
[img=320x140 link=http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/7264/povrayarealighttest2.png]http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/7264/povrayarealighttest2.png[/img]
yellow ball left using looks_like and the right one is using union (did you noticed that smallest dot on the bottom of the left ball? It seems to be the point light ).

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... Of course, size1 & size2 affect the actual number of pointlights used in the array. For Pov-ray, arealights are a rectangular, or circular, area of pointlights. (A fluorescent light is like an array of 1x4)

Re. using x-z plane dimension: My feeling is that the (orientation) vector will be (should be?) oriented as in the original object. Thus a "sun" area-light at a lower angle (w respect to object) will cause longer shadows than one higher up.

I think I could not express myself right here. I will try do better.

The current area light (exported by Wings - and that I wont change anything) uses the plane dimension as the area for "scatter" the point lights and the orientation POV will find by using its face normal.

For the "new" option that we are taking about here we don't have any orientation, because the object can be irregular.
By being a rectangle/square or circle/ellipse the amount of area defined by AXIS_1_VECTOR, AXIS_2_VECTOR in the area_light declaration (that I need to export to POV) will define the amount or how softly are the shadows produced by an object.

I made a new image putting the pictures side-by-side - maybe you can see better what I'm talking about:
[img=640x140 link=http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/8681/arealightsquaresize.jpg]http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/8681/arealightsquaresize.jpg[/img]
the point light array was defined as 8x8, but the area of the plane is: 0.5x0.5, 1x1, 2x2 and 5x5
Please take a look at 2.4.7.5 Area Lights (it will explain better than me ), mainly from the middle of the page when they talk about circular and orient.

The user can mark these options in the Light Properties to be exported, but - by considering the last picture in the link above - without the right definition for light orientation the user can obtain wrong shadows.

At this point I'm just explaining the situation, because I don't have idea about how we would workaround this.

IMHO, best would be to export as area-light/point-light. (Material characteristics will be ignored then).
...
but it would be probably best to keep things simple.)

That's exactly what I would hear. It'll make my life easy.

[Off topic: How would you do a gobo (stencil) light?]

Sorry, Is this a question for me. (my english is a little restrict)

Slightly off-topic: but I wonder if it would be possible to (re-)export only objects / materials. That way we could keep a separate reference (inc) file. To tweak materials, or replace "place-holder" objects with, e.g., cars, pov-trees, humans - at render time.

Yeah, we can think about it in the future.

Thanks for all comments.