Texture preview on lights in the viewport

[caypiranha]

I am often stumbling on the fact, that in Maya you can make textures in viewports to plane lights visible. Perfect.

In 3D Max, I have to turn on the IPR and translate the light in a more or less complicated, guessing way. If I am working on reflection from behind the camera, I am struggeling with orientation in my main cam. It ends up more in guessing than in straight working.

Impossible to get light textures visible in the viewport? Maybe 3D Max´s light object class doesn't support it, but would it be possible to add an invisible Polydummy constrained to the PLane light dimensions. Also on Domelights would be welcome to have it there I guess. But Plane and Disclights are more interesting in this request. An x-ray value would be comfortable here as well.

thanks for listening!

[seandunderdale]

Yeh, having worked in Maya since forever, and using Vray just as long, I was taken aback when I had to use Redshift for a job...that didnt have textures in lights, and I realised what a time saver it is.

[^Lele^]

I really think it'd be much more elegant and clean if it was done on the class itself.

The reason is simple: say you create a light, that by default comes with no textures.
To ensure the faux-light was created when a texture was added, one would need a callback to trigger on that light property change.
And each time the light changed, the callback would have to check if the texture was there, and if it had changed, to then in case update the mesh.
Further to this, now the number of nodes is doubled.
For one or ten lights, this is most definitely doable.
As the number grows, this has the potential to kill Max's performance.

A class code change, instead, would be self-referencing, and no callbacks would be needed to traverse the whole scene each time.
Further to this, there would be more flexibility in dealing with many textured lights, as a specified max resolution for the textures could be implemented, instead of relying on the global texture size for meshes.

[caypiranha]

let´s enclose: wouldn´t it be an elegant compromise to give the Lights an "up"Icon on wich it is recognizable which direction the applied texture will have? that already would help. (Like the Domelight´s nose, like the UV Placement e.g.
And - sorry of course thats outrageous now - this indicator may only appear, if texture has been applied. So you see this directly in the viewport without Don´t know if that would even be possible. Never saw those kinds of "interactive" displayclasses in Max

thanks for listening,
Kay