Ever since I was young, I’ve always wondered if reflected light from windows also produces light. I never asked because I thought it was a “dumb” question. Guess this is the right place…
ps: sorry if I made mistakes, I’m not a native speaker 😉
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Light hits an object…. All light is either reflected or absorbed..
If the object is rough it looks “lit” because when the rays reflect, they scatter in different directions (due to the “roughness” of the surface).
If an object is smooth the light reflects basically the way it came in… and you see an image (we typically call this a reflection).
Now most things have a “reflectance” – so just a portion of that light is reflected…. So you only see a “weaker” image reflected back.
When it comes to glass part of the light is reflected and the rest that isn’t reflected is refracted (passes through)
When it comes to a black object, it can still reflect (something black and shiny).. BUT the light that doesn’t reflect is absorbed by the black local color.
When it comes to something White, a same same but a lot more light is reflected by the local color (also called albedo)
All reflected light is a fraction of the initial light value from the source… the object can never be brighter than the source.
The lambertion shading model is crazy simple!
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambertian_reflectance
Source – I work in computer graphics.
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