Page 589 - Kitab3DsMax

Chapter 20: Using Lights and Basic Lighting Techniques

The default lighting disappears as soon as a light is created in a scene (even if the light is turned off). When
all the lights in a scene are deleted, default lighting magically reappears. So you can always be sure that
your objects are rendered using some sort of lighting. Default lighting actually consists of two lights: The
first light, the key light, is positioned above and to the left, and the bottom light, the fill light, is positioned
below and to the right.
The Lighting and Shadows panel of the Viewport Configuration dialog box has an option to enable default
lighting for any viewport or set the default lighting to use only one light, the key light. You can open this
dialog box by choosing Views ➪ Viewport Configuration or by clicking on the plus sign viewport label and
selecting Configuration from the pop-up menu.
If you want to access the default lights in your scene, you can use the Create ➪ Lights ➪ Standard Lights ➪
Add Default Lights to Scene command to convert the default lights into actual light objects that you can
control and reposition. This command opens a simple dialog box where you can select which lights to add
to the scene and set the Distance Scaling value. This feature lets you start with the default lights and modify
them as needed.

Caution
The Create ➪ Lights ➪ Standard Lights ➪ Add Default Lights to Scene menu command is enabled only if the Default
Lighting and 2 Lights options are selected in the Viewport Configuration dialog box. n
Ambient light

Ambient light is general lighting that uniformly illuminates the entire scene. It is caused by light that
bounces off other objects. Using the Environment dialog box, you can set the ambient light color. You can
also set the default ambient light color in the Rendering panel of the Preference Settings dialog box. This is
the darkest color that can appear in the scene, generally in the shadows.

In addition to these global ambient settings, each material can have an ambient color selected in the
Material Editor.

Caution
Don’t rely on ambient light to fill in unlit sections of your scene. If you use a heavy dose of ambient light instead
of placing secondary lights, your scene objects appear flat, and you won’t get the needed contrast to make your
objects stand out. n
Standard lights

Within the Create panel, the available lights are split into two subcategories: Standard and Photometric. Each
subcategory has its own unique set of properties. The Standard light types include Omni, Spot (Target and
Free) and Direct (Target and Free), Skylight, and two area lights (Spot and Omni) that work with mental ray.

Omni light
The Omni light is like a light bulb: It casts light rays in all directions. The two default lights are Omni
lights.

Spotlight
Spotlights are directional: They can be pointed and sized. The two spotlights available in Max are a Target
Spot and a Free Spot. A Target Spot light consists of a light object and a target marker at which the spot-
light points. A Free Spot light has no target, which enables it to be rotated in any direction using the Select

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