Lecture 4 - Lighting

Max has two default lights in

the viewports which enable the user to see their models in a basically lit environment. As

soon as you start to add yo

ur own lighting, that default changes, and Max updates t

he view to whatever lighting

that you specifiy.

Make a small scene, click and drag a plane in the perspective viewport and place assorted standard and extended

primitives on that plane, so that you can test out the di

fferent lights.

Go to the Create panel, and

click on the small lighting

symbol. Where you can see Photometric, click on the side

arrow and select Standard.

In the Front viewport click and drag a target spot.

In order to see your lighting update it is a good idea to change one of the viewport

s to Perspective view - Active

Shade.

Target Spotlights are very useful for mood lighting, free

target spots can be used for car headlamps, streetlamps

etc. A spotlight illuminates an area within a cone, similar to a

stage light. Target Spotlights point at a target that you aim at

, whereas few spotlights are targetless, so they can be

moved easily. You can align a target light to a path and

animate it if you wanted to.

With your target spotlight highlighted, go to the mo

dify panel, and it will reveal a target spotlight rollout.

Under general parameter

s, you can change the light to either an Omni light or

Directional light. An Omni light

radiates light in all directions and is ideal for general sunlight, or an overhead light in a roo

m, the light radiates from the

one source. Directional lights use a cone of illumination and the sides of the cone are

parallel rather than radiating from a single source like spotlights.

You will also notice that you can add shadows. Just check the box next to shadow and

miraculously you will get

shadows within your scene.

Here you can specify different shadow types using different

rendering techniques.

In the next box you will find Intensity/Colour Attenuation.

Here you can change the intesity of the light by changing the Multiplier spinner, and if you click on the colour square you

can change the colour of the light. Here I have changed the colour of the light to green, and

have added an extra target spot to illuminate the scene even more so that you can see the changes.

You can also change the attenution. You can change your spotlight from a round

stagelight to a square light in the spotlight parameters box.

In Advanced effects you can add a map to your spotlight. Check the projector map box

and click on the map box to add either a proceedural map or one of your own. I have added a map of fence wire to

mine and here is the effect it provides.

Omni lights and Directional lights have the same rollouts and parameters, so it is a good idea to play with these to see what sort of lighting effects that you can produce.