Disable lighting in viewports (Max 2009)

TorQue[MoD]

Hey all!

I tried searching for an answer to this on google, but nothing relevant seems to come up.

Basically I'm working with a scene that has quite a few different lighting sources in it which look great when I render, but when I'm working in max, there's all sorts of shadows that prevent me from seeing my geometry properly if I want to edit a specific area that's hidden by the shadows.

When you originally start max, it seems to have a global lighting that renders everything in "full bright" but as soon as you place a single light in the scene, the global light disappears and you're left with some really heavy shadows if you haven't placed all the lights yet.

Is there some way to disable light rendering in the viewports and turn back on the "full bright" mode, yet still maintain the proper lighting effects when you render the scene?

Thanks in advance!

Slum

It's not a fullbright mode, but a light coming from the camera. Press ctrl-L to toggle default camera lighting. This is for the viewport only.

MoP

If you actually want "full bright" mode, you can set the shading mode to "flat" by right-clicking in the top left corner of your viewport.
Otherwise, do what Slum said.

TorQue[MoD]

Ok. I tried doing the CTRL + L toggle before posting but there was still some weird shadows in my scene. Flat rendering worked perfectly though. Thanks MoP!

TorQue[MoD]

On a completely different subject, do you guys know if there's a way to change the shape of a spotlight so that it doesn't look circular? I'm trying to create the effect of a streak of sunlight on the ground and if its completely round it looks off.

Piflik

You can use the Projector Map option of the light to give it any shape you want. (Found in the Advanced Effects Rollout)

helldiver

What I do is I have all my lights on a different scene as well as the camera and any backdrops. I have different light/camera setups depending on what I'm doing.

I then "merge" the lights and cameras as needed and delete them if I don't want to use them. It's faster than actually opening the rollout and turning them off manually, which in some scenes can take a while. Ctrl+L works sometimes, but a lot of times particularly when I'm doing intricate texture work I need good lighting. I've used the Flat a few times, but remember that you can't use that as a guide for how bright your texture is, particularly skin. The other issue I've had with flat is that sometimes I use the shadows as a guide for certain features of the texture.