Light texture not working ?

[ilmelovfx]

Hi, I have to make a "gobo/gel like" effect with vray plane light. I create a new area (plane) light, I assign a black and white (standard bitmap map) texture in the Texture slot, but when rendering nothing shows up in the rendered image... I did a new scene with only a plane and a light to show you my problem (see attached image), light is directional (0,82) to better mimic a spotlight. I thought this to be a simple effect to achieve... My 3ds max is 2016 and vray is version 3.60.04 (but this problem occurs in my 3ds max 2018 installation too). Is there something I did wrong? I searched the forum but didn't find any clue... Thank you for your help

[ilmelovfx]

Finally I managed to obtain some kind of gobo effect. I had to crank up the directional value of the light (almost near 1.0, between 0.95 and 0.98 ) . Hope this will help someone who tries to achieve the same effects.

[vlado]

You could also use a spot light with a projection texture.

Best regards,
Vlado

[ilmelovfx]

Thank you Vlado, I thought I could achieve better results using Vray native lights (I think you mean the standard 3ds max Target Spot light) .