User Manual

Spotlight
A spotlight is an advanced point light that produces a well defined cone of light with falloff. This
is the only light that produces shadows.
From left to right: Directional light, point light, and spotlight.
All of the Light nodes display onscreen controls in the viewer, although not all controls affect
every light type. In the case of the ambient light, the position has no effect on the results. The
directional light can be rotated, but position and scale will be ignored. The point light ignores
rotation. Both position and rotation apply to the spotlight.
Lighting Hierarchies
Lights normally do not pass through a Merge, since the Pass Through Lights checkbox is off by
default. This provides a mechanism for controlling which objects are lit by which lights. For
example, in the following two node trees, two shapes and an ambient light are combined with a
Merge3D node, which is then connected to another Merge3D node that’s also connected to a
plane and a spotlight. At the left, the first Merge3D node of this tree has Pass Through Lights
disabled, so you can only see the two shapes lit. At the right, Pass Through Lights has been
enabled, so both the foreground shapes and the background image plane receive lighting.
Pass Through Lights is disabled, so only the front two shapes are illuminated (left). Pass Through Lights is
enabled, so all shapes connected to both Merge3D nodes are illuminated (right).
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