This Lighting menu displays above the scene view, or above each view panel in a layout with multiple scene views.
Use the items in this menu to select which lights or groups of lights to use in your scene.
Turns on default lighting in the scene view only; it does not affect your final render. Surfaces appear fully illuminated by default lights in the view.
See also Default lighting.
Surfaces appear illuminated by at least 8 lights (depending on the capabilities of your graphics card) in the scene. This option gives you a representation of what the lights will look like when the image is rendered.
Once you create lights, you can interactively place them and view the scene with lighting before you render.
Surfaces appear illuminated by selected lights in the view as well as in the Render View.
Uses only selected lights. If you change the light selection, the lighting also changes.
Use this option with Viewport 2.0 or the Legacy Default Viewport to shade objects with an ambient light.
When using Viewport 2.0, you can choose between: a physically accurate no light mode (by selecting Lighting > Use No Lights); or, an ambient light mode where objects are shaded with one default ambient light (color = white and intensity =1) (by selecting Lighting > Use Flat Lighting).
Select this option with Viewport 2.0 or Legacy High Quality Viewport for a physically accurate no light mode. Hardware lighting is disabled; there is no ambient light, and no shading occurs.
When on, illuminates both sides of an object. Two Sided Lighting is on by default. Note that Maya’s performance may decrease on some systems.
Use Lighting > Shadows to see hardware shadow maps in the scene view.
Hardware shadow maps from directional or spot lights for geometry (NURBS, polygons, subdivision surfaces) and particles (points, multipoints, and spheres only) can be calculated and displayed on graphics cards with drivers that support the ARB_multitexture and EXT_texture_env_combine OpenGL extensions.