My question:
Is there a way in MonoGame to specifiy a light source, and let it shine through a quad/texture, effectively reducing the remaining light, and then let that shine trough the next layer, just like a light behind real paper sheets, laid over each other (with a gap)?
Explanation:
I am trying to render a light/shadow box using MonoGame.
A shadow box is a box built out of paper cut-outs, layered on top of each other, with a lightsource underneath. The density of the paper and distance between paper layers and amount of previous layers that the light had to pass through determines the light level for each layer(in my basic understanding). You can search google for 'paper light box', to get an idea what I am talking about. (https://www.google.com/search?q=paper+light+box&tbm=isch)
The way I am currently rendering the layers is by drawing a texture on a quad facing the camera, and calculating the light level myself, by simply linearly interpolating between the position of an imaginary light source and the camera position, assigning each layer a light level (DirectionalLight0 in BasicEffect).
This obviously doesn't take into account the amount of layers which the light already had to pass through, so the paper layers always only have a single light level instead of having kinds of light/shadow gradients.
I tried using alpha blending between the layers, but that doesn't quite seem to do it, since alpha blending also doesn't take into account the distance between the layers.
As you might've guessed, I am rather new to MonoGame or graphics programming in general. My thought was that this should be some kind of generic problem that has already been solved by dozens of people, but hours of googling didn't lead me anywhere, so I'd appreciate your help very much, even if it might just be telling me the correct words to google for :)
