Anti-camera01

Light outside the frame.

01 / SUNLIT STUDIODrag to orbit · scroll to move closer

One light path

Color changes. Energy fades.
PATH 001—Isolate to follow this ray through the room

A little light-transport model

Each path starts at the source and intersects the room. A bounce multiplies its linear RGB energy by the surface reflectance, then samples a diffuse or mirror direction.

Paths stop at the bounce limit, below 2.5% of the strongest initial channel, or when they leave through the window. No branching is needed: each reflection adds one segment.

The accumulated field records RGB energy times distance traveled in each 10 cm cell, normalized by sample count and cell volume. It combines all travel directions. Field contrast and exposure shape its display; it is not a calibrated measurement.

Glow, line width, and slowed travel make the paths visible. This is an illustrative RGB model, not a spectral or calibrated illumination solver.

The light we don’t see

A camera records light that reaches its tiny aperture. The rest keeps traveling: past the camera, into a wall, across the room.

Anti-camera steps outside that viewpoint. It makes a small sample of those journeys visible, including the empty space between surfaces. The room is a scaffold; the light is the subject.

Try reducing Room presence to zero, then isolating one path. Watch a warm ray turn blue after hitting the rug, or pick up the red of the sofa.

“Through the lens” is a conventional shaded view from the small camera in the room, for comparison. It is not an image reconstructed from the displayed rays. Paths are illustrative samples; this app does not measure the fraction captured by a real lens. Animation speed is intentionally far slower than light.