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This rollout is only available when the Type is set to Plane or Disc.

Directional – By default, the light from the Plane or Disc light is spread out equally in all directions on the side in which the light points. As this parameter is increased toward a value of 1.0, the spread narrows, making the light more directional. A value of 0 (default) makes the light shine in all directions around the light source. A value of 0.5 pushes the light cone to a 45-degree angle, and a value of 1.0 (maximum) makes a 90-degree light cone. For more information, see the Directional Spread example below.

Preview – Allows the light's spread angle to be seen as a wireframe in the viewport, as it is set by the light's Directional parameter.

Always – The preview is always displayed. 
Selected – The preview is displayed only when the light is selected. 
Never – The preview is never displayed.

Preview texmap – If a texture is used to drive the light, enabling this shows the texture in the viewport. This option is grayed out if your 3ds Max viewport is configured to use Nitrous viewport driver. To enable, switch to the direct3D viewport.

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Exclude – Opens the 3ds Max Exclude/Include window for selection of objects to be excluded or included in illumination and/or shadow-casting for this light.

Cast shadows – When enabled (the default), the light casts shadows. Turn this option off to disable shadow casting for the light.

Double-sided – When the light is a Plane or Disc type, this option controls whether light is beamed from both sides of the light icon. This field has no effect for Sphere type of light source. For more information, see The Single-Sided vs Double-Sided Lights example below.

Invisible – Controls whether the shape of the light source is visible in the rendered image. When this option is disabled, the light source is rendered in the color specified by the Color or Temperature setting in the Intensity rollout. This option only affects the visibility of the light when seen directly by the camera or through refractions. The visibility of the light with respect to reflections is controlled by the Affect reflections option.

Note: Regardless of whether this option is enabled, the light source is still taken into account by Global Illumination calculations, which might cause secondary GI rays to be blocked by or bounced off the light's surface. To make the light completely invisible to GI, place a VRayColor texture map into the light's texture slot and set the alpha value for the VRayColor map to 0.0.

Occlude other lights – Controls the behavior of invisible lights in relation to other light sources. When enabled, the light blocks the lighting from other lights as if it's visible. Also in reflections the light behaves as it's visible and occludes other lights. When disabled, the light is transparent for other lights and does not occlude them. This option doesn't affect visible lights (as they always occlude other lights) and dome lights (which are always additive).

Affect diffuse – Determines whether the light affects the diffuse portion of the materials. The value controls the light's contribution to the diffuse portion of the materials.

Affect specular – Determines whether the light affects the specular portion of the materials. The value controls the light's contribution to specular reflections.

Affect reflections – Specifies whether the light source appears in reflections.

Affect atmospherics - Specifies whether the light influences the atmospheric effects in the scene. The value determines the amount of involvement.

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Shadow bias – This value moves the shadow toward or away from the shadow-casting object (or objects). Higher values move the shadow toward the object(s), while lower values move it away. If this value is too extreme, shadows can "leak" through places they shouldn't or "detach" from an object. Other effects from extreme values include Moire patterns, out-of-place dark areas on surfaces, and shadows not appearing at all in the rendering.

Cutoff – Specifies a threshold for the light's intensity, cutting off the light's effect on a surface when it falls below this value. Lights lose intensity due to GI bouncing or decay. When light hits a surface but its intensity falls below the cutoff, the effect of the light on that surface is not computed. This can be useful in scenes with many lights, where you want to limit the effect of the lights to some distance around them or reduce computations (and thus reduce rendering time) where the light's impact is negligible. Larger values limit the light's effect on objects to a smaller area around the light source, while lower values increase the range of the light's effect. If you specify 0.0, there is no cutoff and the light is calculated for all surfaces regardless of intensity loss. The default value is 0.001. This parameter is not available when the renderer is set to GPU.

Tex resolution – Specifies the resolution at which the texture is resampled for importance sampling.

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Enable viewport shading – When enabled, the effect of the light is visible in the viewport. 

Viewport wire color – When enabled, the light's wireframe is displayed in the specified color in viewports.

Icon text – Enables or disables the preview of the light name in the viewport.

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