2009

The Cylinder shape has Length and Radius controls.
Rendering group
Shape visible to renderer When on, the shape of the light is visible
in renderings as a self-illuminated (glowing) shape, provided the light object
is within the field of view. When off, the light’s shape is not rendered, only
the light it casts. Default=off.
See Self-Illuminating Photometric Lights on page 5042 for more information
about this option.
Shadow Samples Sets the overall quality of shadows. If the rendered image
appears grainy, increase this value. If rendering is too time consuming, decrease
it. Default=32.
This setting doesn’t appear in the interface when Point is chosen as the shadow
shape.
Self-Illuminating Photometric Lights
You can make a photometric light self illuminating by turning on the Shape
Visible To Renderer option in the
Shape/Area Shadows rollout on page 5040.
When you turn on Shape Visible To Renderer, by default 3ds Max turns off
Specular in the Advanced Effects rollout on page 5108. This prevents unwanted
effects if the area of the photometric light is small. Small lights have a high
luminance, and also are hard for specular rays to find: the result can be overly
bright spots in your rendering.
■ If the self-illuminating photometric light has a small area, leave Specular
turned off.
■ If the self-illuminating light has a large area (for example, a skylight or a
fluorescent tube), turn Specular back on for the most realistic effect.
Combining Self-Illuminating Photometric Lights and Self-Illuminating
Materials
To make a light fixture visible to the renderer, we recommend modeling the
light fixture with actual geometry that has a self-illuminating material applied
to it.
5042 | Chapter 18 Lights and Cameras