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1181

1166 Chapter 15: Lights and Cameras

Outdoor sce n e lit by the IES sky light

Note: (IES stands for Illuminating Engineer ing

Society; see

IES Standard File Format (page

2–1172)

Yo u c a n c r e a t e d a y l i g h t l i g h t s m a n u a l l y, b u t

to get the best results, you should u se them in

conjunction with the

Daylight system (page

1–394)

. The Daylight system combines the two

daylightcomponentsofsunandskyinaunified

interface. It allows you to set date and time

positions with the lig ht type you want to use.

IES Sky works correctly only when the sky object

is pointing down from the Z axis , meaning that it

points dow n when looking from the Top view.

When usi ng the default scanline renderer, IES Sky

produces the best results when used in conjunction

with one of the

advanced lighting options (page

3–43)

: radiosity or light tracing.

Wa rn in g : When you render with the

mental ray renderer

(page 3–77)

, objects illuminated by IES Sk y appear dark

unless you turn on

Final Gathering (page 3–1034)

.The

toggle for Final Gathering is on the

Final Gather rollout

(page 3–109)

of the Render Scene dialog.

When you add an IES Sky light, 3ds Max

automatically assigns a

Look At controller (page

2–329)

to it, with the light’s target object assigned

as the Look At t arget. You can use the controller

settings on the Motion p anel to assign any other

object in the scene as the Lo ok At target.

Using Render Elements with an IES Sk y

Light

If you use

Render Elements (page 3–126)

to output

the

lighting element (page 3–136)

of an IES Sky

light in a scene using either radiosity or the light

tracer, you cannot separate the direct, indirect, and

shadowchannelsofthelight.Allthreeelements

of the IES Sky lighting are output to the Indirect

Light channel.