About Point Lights

About Point Lights

Point Lights

A normal point light does not target an object, but illuminates everything around it. Point lights can be used for general lighting effects and simulate lighting sources such as candles and light bulbs.

A target point light has additional target properties so it can be directed to an object. It can also be created from a point light by changing the Targeted property of the point light from No to Yes.

In the standard lighting workflow, you can set a point light manually so its intensity diminishes with respect to distance either linearly, according to the inverse square of the distance, or not at all. By default, the attenuation is set to None.
Starting with Toolbox 2016-based products, all standard lights are calculated as photometric lights. It is recommended to update all standard lights in a scene to photometric lights.

Point Lights in Photometric Workflow

A point light can have photometric distribution properties. The attenuation for a photometric point light is always set to the inverse square.

When the LIGHTINGUNITS system variable is set to 1 (American units) or 2 (International SI units) for photometric lighting, additional properties are available for a point light. The following photometric properties can be set via the Properties palette:
  1. Lamp Intensity. Specifies the inherent brightness of the light. Specifies the intensity, flux or illuminance of the lamp.
  2. Resulting Intensity. Gives the final brightness of the light. (Product of lamp intensity and intensity factor. Read-only.)
  3. Lamp Color. Specifies the inherent color of the light in Kelvin temperature or standard.
  4. Resulting Color. Gives the final color of the light. This is determined by a combination of the filter and lamp colors. (Product of filter and lamp color. Read-only.)
When the drawing lighting units are photometric, the attenuation type property becomes disabled. Photometric lights have fixed, inverse-square attenuation.

The following image is an example of a photometric point light with the photometric properties outlined on the Properties palette:




In the legacy standard lighting workflow, you can set a point light manually so its intensity diminishes with respect to distance either linearly, according to the inverse square of the distance, or not at all. By default, the attenuation is set to None.

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