2009
■ Lighting in 3ds Max on page 4984
■ Guidelines for Lighting on page 4986
■ Positioning Light Objects on page 4990
■ Animating Lights on page 4996
■ Light Include/Exclude Tool on page 4997
■ Light Lister on page 5000
Working with Lights
The procedures in this topic apply to both standard and photometric lights.
Here are some general tips about working with lights:
■ You can add lights using the
Substitute modifier on page 1762 to replace
AutoCAD blocks with 3ds Max light objects or
luminaires on page 295.
■ One simple way to light a scene is to convert the default lighting into light
objects by using the command
Add Default Lights To Scene on page 170.
NOTE Add Default Lights To Scene works only if you have used the Viewport
Configuration dialog
on page 7817 to have the scene use two default lights.
■ You can turn the display of light objects on and off with an option in the
Display panel on page 7665. See the “Procedures” section, below.
■ You can change the renderability of lights in your scene using the
Renderable option on the
General panel on page 305 of the Object Properties
dialog.
■ You can change the renderability of a group of lights in your scene using
the Layer Manager on page 7441.
NOTE In order to be turned on/off through the Layer Manager, lights must
have their Render Options set to ByLayer in the
General panel on page 305 of
the Object Properties dialog.
TIP To automatically set new lights as renderable ByLayer, turn on New Lights
Renderable By Layer on the
General panel on page 7744 of the Preferences dialog.
Using Lights | 4975