8
mr Area Spotlight 1153
now two lights in the s cene: t he original light,
and the area light based on it.
6. Click Close to dismiss t he “Convert To mr Area
Lights” and MAXScript rollouts.
Inter face
On—Turns the area light on and off. When On
is on, the m ental ray renderer uses the light to
illuminate the scene. When On is off, the mental
ray renderer doesn’t use the light. Default=on.
Show Icon in R enderer —When on, the mental
ray renderer renders a dark shape at the light’s
location.Whenoff,thearealightdoesn’trender.
Default=off.
Ty pe —Changes the shape of the area lig ht. The
choices are Sphere, for a spherical volume,
and Cy linder, for a cy lindrical volume.
Default=Sphere.
Tip: You can use Rotate to adjust the orientation of
a cylindr ical area omni light. However, no gizmo
appears while you rotate the light.
Radius—Sets the radius of the sphere or cylinder,
in 3ds Max units. Default=20.0.
Height—Available only when Cylinder is the active
type of area l i ght. Sets the height of the cylinder,
in 3ds Max units. Default=20.0.
As you use these spinners to adjust the size of the
area light, a gizm o appears in viewports to show
the adjusted size. This gizmo disappears once you
finish adjusting the va lue.
Samples group
UandV—Adjust the quality of shadows cast by
the area light. These values specif y how many
samplestotakewithinthelight’sarea. Higher
values can improve rendering quality at a cost of
rendering time. For a spherical light, U specifies
thenumberofsubdivisionsalongtheradius,and
V specifies the number of angular subdivisions.
For a cylindrical light, U specifies the number
of sampled subdivisions along the height, and
V specifies the number of angular subdivisions.
Default=5 for both U and V.
mr Area Spotlight
Create panel > Lights > mr Area Spot button > Area Light
Parameters ro llout
When you render a scene u sing the
mental ray
renderer (page 3–77)
, an area spotlight emits light
from a rectangular or disc-shaped area, rather
than from a point source. With the default scanline
renderer, the area spotlight behaves like any other
standard spotlight.
Note: In3dsMax,areaspotlightsarecreatedand
suppor ted by a MAXScript script. Only the mental
ray renderer uses the parameters in the Area Light
Parameters rollout. See
Enhancements to Standard
Features (page 3–84)
for more details.
Tip: Area lights take longer to render than point
lights. To create a quick test (or draf t) rendering,
youcanusetheArea/LinearLightsasPointLights
toggle on the
Common Parameters rollout (page
3–27)
of the Render Scene dialog to speed up your
rendering.