Light Types:

In Figure 9.1, you'll see the list of lights offered in trueSpace.

Fig 9.1

Once you've placed your light, by right clicking on the light itself, you can bring up the lights options panel (fig 9.2). You can also bring this panel up by selecting the light in the Keyframe/Scene Editor, right-clicking on it and selecting "Edit". This panel is common with most types of lights. While a couple options may not be available on a specific type of light, most are shared between them. Some lights have additional options which can also be displayed when you expand the options panel.

Fig 9.2

The areas on the main option panel are: Color, Intensity (brightness), Cast Shadows, Fall Off, Effects and Sky (this is only for Sky Lights).

Additional options vary from Images to project (Projector lights), G.data (Goniometric lights), Units and Temperature. Additional information on the specifics of each of these options can be found in the manual, in the chapter on Lighting.

Depending on the light type, some of these options will not function, as they are reserved for specific lights. So trying to assign an image to a local light would not work.

Like a lot of the other option panels, the red triangle at the top will reveal or hide the additional options shown in figure 9.2.

By right clicking on each of the main areas within the options panel, you can adjust the settings of each of the lights options. To turn on shadow casting, click on the top icon on the right side of the panel and hold down the mouse button -  the panel will expand and you can choose "Toggle shadow casting by current light". Once turned on, right click on this icon, and you can adjust how the shadow will appear; clean and crisp or faded and rough. Ray Traced shadows are more accurate than Mapped shadows, but their shadows are harder and they take longer to render. 

Most of these have their own options, so take your time and go through each of the settings. Depending on how you setup your lights it can have a major impact on rendering times. The use of some lights, Sky Lights for example, by themselves will increase your render times, but some scenes will require that level of realism, just be aware of this when you go to hit the render button.

Another light to be cautious with is the Goniometric light. This requires the use of the G-Data setting. This can be found at a number of lighting manufacturers web sites. These setting describes how the light is cast, or behaves. These lights can produce very accurate simulations of real world lights and are great for architectural, or indoor renders.

Some of the render options will also have an effect on your lights. Ray Tracing/Scan Line being just one of them. If you are attempting to render realistic glass textures or transparencies, Ray Tracing is a MUST. Without it, your objects will normally show up as pure black. There are also a number of Post-Processing or Foreground effects which can be applied to your lights: Lens Flair, Fog, Volumetric shadows, etc. These have to be enabled both on the light itself and then in the Render options.

For volumetric lights, turn on the volumetric options for the light in the options panel (only spotlights and projector lights can have volumetric effects), and also enable  "Foreground Effects Shader - Simple Volumetric" in the Render Options panel (the toolbar in the upper right of your screen). Right-click on this icon to access the options for the volumetric effects. If your volumetric light is going to shine through a transparent texture, enable shadow casting for the light and set the shadow transparency to "Transparent Shadows" in the shadows options. 

To get a good lens flair, you would first place a spot light into your scene. Have at least part of it pointing to your camera. Then turn on the Lens Flair option on the light itself. Now right click on the render icon and also enable the Glows & Lens Flairs Effects. When you render your scene you should now see a lens flair around the light source.

By expanding the Glows & Lens Flairs options from the Render options, you can also adjust how the flair will look in your scene, its effect range, Ghosting, Rays, etc. Figure 9.3 is a single Spotlight, aimed just below the standard perspective view. I have adjusted the color setting toward the green side, enabled Lens Flairs, then have Ghosting set to 3, and Rays set to Random.

Fig 9.3