Area lights have many additional options. Any geometry
can be selected to act as a mesh light.
Selecting an Area Light Geometry
The an shape of area light can be either one of the default shape provided, or any Maya geometry mesh, including multiple geometries. They be selected using Select Geometry...:
The selected geometries will:
- Be parented underneath the original area light. So the transform of the area light will be applied to the selected geometries.
- Have the area light shader assigned.
- Inherit all the attributes of the area light (exposure, intensity, color, etc).
Demo Scene
The following example shows a filament shaped in a torus rendered as an area light. This simple Maya scene can be downloaded here.
