3ds Max - Lights

The plug-in supports 3 types of lights: point, spot and area via the MxLight node available from the Create->Lights->Maxwell section. Since Maxwell does not directly offer any kind of analytic light models, the plug-in generates the appropriate geometry and emitter material for each light type:

• Point lights generate a sphere of size 1. The size of the sphere can be adjusted via the standard max scale control.
• Spot lights generate a cone with an emitting disk inside. The height of the cone and the distance between the apex and the emitting disk can be set in the Maxwell Render rollup. The emitter material is applied only on the disk; a diffuse grey material is applied on the occluder cone.
• Area lights generate a square with an emitter material applied. The size of the area is defined by the Area Width and Area Height parameters. The object can be scaled to the desired size using the regular scale tool in Max.

The generated emitter material takes its luminous intensity and color from the MxLight node parameters. These closely resemble the settings available in a emitter material.

The Use Ghost BSDF toggle controls the creation of a "ghost BSDF" component in the generated emitter material. When this is off, the material contains a single layer with only an emitter component inside. When the option is enabled, a fully transparent BSDF is added, so that the light geometry is not visible in the render.