Setting Arnold Quad Light parameters - 3ds Max Tutorial

- [Instructor] The Arnold Quad light has numerous parameters to help us ART direct the look of the illumination any way we want. To see the effect of those parameters most clearly, I want to move the light very close to a surface. I'll just move it down onto the floor. Grab the Select and Move tool, select the light, and give it a Z position value of only five centimeters. And now it's right above the floor. I've created a physical camera view here that zoomed in on that light, so we can see the effects of the parameters very clearly. Let's right-click in that physical camera view, so we don't lose our selection, and then do an ActiveShade render. Click ActiveShade on the main toolbar, and also open up the Modify panel, and we can see that it's very overexposed. So that we can see the effects of changing these parameters, let's bring the Exposure value down. In the Modify panels Color/Intensity rollout, we'll set the Exposure to a value of one. And now we can see it's a very soft look to the light, even though we've got hard edges on the actual area light. And that's because of two parameters in the Shape rollout. Spread controls the angle of light emission. With the default Spread value of one, light is emitted equally in all directions in a hemispherical pattern around the light. If we reduce the Spread amount, then the light will become more focused. Let's bring that down to let's say 0.5 or so, and now we're starting to see a bit more sharp outline to our light on the floor. If we bring Spread all the way down to zero, then the light rays from this Quad light, are going to be exactly perpendicular to the light. We're going to get parallel rays of light, that shoot out at right angles from the surface of the Quad light. And with a Spread value of zero, now we can see the effect of the Soft Edge parameter. The light is not equally intense across the entire surface. Let's reduce the Soft Edge parameter down to zero, and now we have perfectly hard edges. We're seeing the same amount of illumination coming from every point on that Quad light. And that's what I want in this case. So I'll leave the Soft Edge at zero, but I do want some amount of Spread to give the effect of the diffusion on this lamp. I'll set the Spread to a value of 0.5. That looks pretty good, now I can move it back up to the light fixture. Set its Z position value to 245 centimeters. Then right-click in the physical camera view, and we can see it in the ActiveShade rendering now. We'll need to increase the brightness. Set the Exposure to a value of six. We can also change the color temperature very easily. In the Color section, we can set it to Kelvin, and bring it down to, let's say, 5,500 degrees Kelvin, and now, we've got a slightly more orange rendering. We can also increase the quality of the illumination. We can set the Rendering Samples value to three, and now we'll see better direct illumination from that Quad light. We should also rename it, because we want to have multiple copies of this light. So let's go up to its name field, and we'll call it light ceiling long 001. So now we've got the light that we want, and we can just make some duplicates of this light for the other lamps in the scene. I'll close ActiveShade. Let's maximize the top view. Right-click in that view, and use the keyboard shortcut, Alt W. We can dolly back with the mouse wheel. And let's make a clone. With that light still selected, go to the Edit menu, and choose Clone. And we've got a name automatically, light ceiling long 002, and it'll be an Instance. And all these lights will have the same parameters. Click OK, and with the Move tool still active, I'm going to position it over on the other lamp. I know what that's going to be already, I'm just going to plug that in. We'll set that to an X position value of 150. Then reselect light number one, and make another clone. Edit, Clone. Again, it's an Instance, and this is light number three. Click OK, and again, we want to position that new light over the existing light fixture. Let's set its Y position value to negative 300 centimeters. And we need just one more light. With light number three selected, we'll once again go back to the Edit menu, and choose Clone. Click OK, and once again, we'll set it to an X position value of 150 centimeters. Now I've got four identical Quad lights. Let's go back to our four viewport layout with Alt W. Click in the physical camera view, and do an ActiveShade rendering to see what that looks like with four Quad lights, instead of just one. That's how to ART direct the parameters of an Arnold Quad light.