Tool Wishlist

Surface Type Multipliers:

When fine tuning the lighting in a scene, frequently the director will ask for tweaks like bringing down the spec hit from a light.

You can't reduce the multiplier on the light on the left, because that will also reduce the diffuse brightness. You also can't reduce the specularity of the material, because doing that will also darken the highlight on the right side of your objects. Currently the only way to solve this is to make a copy of your left light, fiddle with exclusion lists and make one light diffuse only and one spec only using the Affect Surfaces Checkboxes in the light.

This becomes cumbersome when you have a lot of lights, and now a simple change to a light becomes a change to multiple lights. And adding scene objects could potentially break your inclusion / exclusion lists.

I would like separate multipliers in each light for diffuse, spec and SSS (SSS would affect the amount of SSS that a light produces in mentalray's 4 SSS materials)

This would let you fine tune how a specific light is affecting the various material properties in your scene in a very fast and intuitive way.

Here's a potential UI mockup...

And here's the results you can now achieve with a single light...

If you agree with this wish, please go and VOTE for it on the official Autodesk Wishlist. The top voted wishes will be considered for future versions of max.