Positioning Light Objects

Once you have placed lights in your scene, you can use transforms to change a light's position or orientation.

Transforming Lights

Use transforms on light objects as follows:

Move: Use Move to change the position of lights. You can also use it to change the position of light targets.

Rotate: Use Rotate to change the orientation of lights.

NoteYou can't rotate a target light about its local X or Y axes. Instead, use Move to move the light or its target. Rotating the light about its local Z axis can be useful if the light uses a rectangular beam or projects a bitmap.

Rotating a plain omni light or a photometric light with spherical distribution has no effect, as these lights cast light uniformly in all directions. However, rotating an omni light or a spherical light with projection causes the projected image to rotate.

Scale: Scaling Point, Linear, or Area lights has no effect. Using Scale with spotlights and directional lights changes the size of their light beam and attenuation ranges. Scaling omni lights changes only the attenuation ranges. Scaling photometric lights changes their attenuation rate.

Light viewports are another convenient way to transform and change parameters of spotlights and directional lights.

TipWhen you adjust lights, it can be useful to turn off Adaptive Degradation. If Adaptive Degradation is on and shaded viewports begin to display in wireframe, you won't see the result of the changes you make to lights.

Placing Highlights

You use Place Highlight to position a light to create a specular highlight at a designated point on an object. Place Highlight is one of the buttons on the Align flyout. Place Highlight moves or rotates the selected light object to aim it at a face on an object you pick. The light maintains its original distance from the face. Place Highlight works with any kind of selected object. You can also use Place Highlight with a selection set that contains more than one object. All objects maintain their initial distance from the face.