Creates a spotlight that emits a directional cone of light.
Summary
A spotlight distribution casts a focused beam of light like a flashlight, a follow spot in a theater, or a headlight.
List of Prompts
The following prompts are displayed.
Sets the location for the spotlight. Enter coordinate values or click a location in the drawing area.
Specifies the name of the light. You can use uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, spaces, hyphens (-), and underscores (_) in the name.
Sets the intensity or brightness of the light. The range is 0.00 to the maximum value that is supported by your system.
Specifies the angle that defines the brightest cone of light, which is known to lighting designers as the beam angle. This value can range from 0 to 160 degrees or the equivalent values based on AUNITS.
Specifies the angle that defines the full cone of light, which is also known as the field angle. This value can range from 0 to 160 degrees. The default is 50 degrees or the equivalent values based on AUNITS. The falloff angle must be greater than or equal to the hotspot angle.
(Available when the LIGHTINGUNITS system variable is 1 or 2)
Photometry is the measurement of the luminous intensities of visible light sources.
In photometry, luminous intensity is a measure of the perceived power emitted by a light source in a particular direction. Luminous flux is the perceived power per unit of solid angle. The total luminous flux for a lamp is the perceived power emitted in all directions. Luminance is the total luminous flux incident on a surface, per unit area.
- Intensity
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Enter an intensity value in candelas, flux value, or illuminance value.
- Intensity. Sets intensity based on candelas (cd), the SI base unit of luminous intensity. This value sets the perceived power emitted by a light source in a particular direction.
- Flux. Sets intensity based on lux (lx), an SI unit of illuminance.
- Illuminance.Sets intensity based on foot-candles (fc), the American unit of illuminance. Specify a distance to use to calculate illuminance.
- Color
- Exit
- Off
- Sharp
- Soft Mapped
- Soft Sampled
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Displays realistic shadows with softer shadows (penumbra) based on extended light sources.
- Shape. Species the shape of the shadow (disk or rectangle) and its dimensions (radius or shape and width).
- Samples. Specifies the size of the sample.
- Visible. Specifies whether the shape of the shadow is visible.
- Exit. Returns to the previous prompt.
Controls how light diminishes over distance. The farther away an object is from a spotlight, the darker the object appears. Attenuation is also known as decay.
- Attenuation Type
-
Sets whether and how attenuation is displayed. The farther away an object is from a point light, the darker the object appears. Attenuation is also known as decay.
- None. Sets no attenuation. Objects far from the spotlight are as bright as objects close to the light.
- Inverse Linear. Sets attenuation to be the inverse of the linear distance from the light. For example, at a distance of 2 units, light is half as strong as at the spotlight; at a distance of 4 units, light is one quarter as strong. The default value for inverse linear is half the maximum intensity.
- Inverse Squared. Sets attenuation to be the inverse of the square of the distance from the light. For example, at a distance of 2 units, light is one quarter as strong as at the spotlight; at a distance of 4 units, light is one sixteenth as strong.
- Use Limits
- Attenuation Start Limit
- Attenuation End Limit