Working with Lighting

This week we looked at lighting and how it can be used in our animations. Using a preset .max file, I followed through the exercise which would show how all the different lights work. First of all I select the lights tab in the create tab of the control panel. This bring up the option of all the lights. Lights avaliable to use are Omni Lights, Spot Lights, Direct Lights and a few others as shown in the image below;

Omni lights are like a miniture sun, they omit light in all directions from the point they are created. Spot lights use light in an outward cone shape from a single point and direction lights are similar to spot lights however they project light in a culinder or rectangular shape in the direction they are set. The other lights are more advanced lighting and so I wont be using these as much in my final animation. I will have a look at what they do and how they work and if its what is needed then I shall consider using them.

So back to the task, firstly i need to create an Omni light in my scene. To do this I select omni light from the lights tab and then I place it in the top right of the front view perspective so that it is above the dolphin but in line with its side.

Here is the effect that the Omni light has on the dolphin, Notice that the side where the omni light is placed has highlights and the other side is shadowed;

 Now ill take a look at the direct light, im goign to use the target direct on the dolphine and see how it effects the object. Here is how it effects the dolphin;

As you can see the area covered by the wireframe of the light has been covered in light but the area outside of the wirefram is dark without light.