making an area light appear with photometric lights

[juzzy]

I am sure this has been answered somewhere but I can find it.. so here goes

 

I am trying to render a scene with a bunch of down lights, I am using an instanced photometric light. I need them to illuminate the scene but also want them the appear in the ceiling, as points, I tried making a little sphere above them and adding self illumination to it, but it looks weak, does anyone know how to do this with photometric lights?

[datacrasher]

when you set you're photmetic lights then i would set it as web then you can use the IES lighting that is built into max or find some IES that are online the IES lighting built into max are great I would try the point stadiums light see if this will give you the effect you are looking for but from what i remember i think you need to have the logomatic exposure controls enabled and check (tick) the daylight.

[juzzy]

thanks for the reply, I will look into that, I found what I was looking for under the "Shape/Area Shadows" roll out, they called this the Area Light in the MR Area Omni...