mmFalloffSpotLight 1.0.0 for Maya (maya script)

Description:

Creates a spotlight that gives you precise control over it's brightness in relation to it's distance. Regions can be intuitively adjusted in Maya's viewport by using the light's standard decay-region manipulators. The light will give you control over 5 different regions.
Works both with Mental Ray and Maya Software Renderer.

• Max Brightness Region: The shines with the highest, constant intensity in this area.
• Near Fallof & Far Falloff Cone: Area in which the light;s intensity will be defined by a linear falloff, ranging from it's maxBrightness to it's near- or farBrightness region.
• Near Brigthess & Far Brightness Region: In this area the light shines with a constant intensity (which is in all cases must be less or equal to it's maxBrightness).

Instructions:

• Copy the mel-file into Maya's script directory and source the script (source "mmFalloffSpotLight.mel";)
• To create a light, type the following command mmFalloffSpotlight(); or assign it to a shelf-button.
• A new spotlight will be created. At the first glance, it's indistinguishable from Maya's default-spotlight,
  

  except for a couple of new attributes. You will also notice that the light's intensity attribute has an incoming connection. It's intensity must be controlled using maxBrightness, nearBrightness and farBrightness The maxBrightness controls the spotlight's intensity in the maxBrightness region. It's an absolute value and the light intensity in that area will be constant.

  The nearBrightness and farBrightness attributes are relative values, which are indicating their intensity in relation to the maxBrightness (0 means "no light", 1 means "as bright as maxBrightness", 0.4 means "40% intensity of maxBrightness" and so on...)
  The fields nearValue and Far Value indicate the light intensity in these areas as absolute values. The values from the example above will result in the followong light distribution:
  
  
  
  
• In order to adjust the light's decay in various areas, select it and press "T". A manipulator will pop-up. Click on it for 5 times (until the indicator is at 7 o`clock). Left- or middle-mouse drag any of the four circles. The space between the 1st & 2nd and between the 3rd & 4th circle are the falloff regions with linear light decay. The space in the middle is the maxBrightness region. The area before and after the regions mentioned above are the Near- and Far Brightness.

Bugs, Limitations and Workarounds:

• Deleting a mmFalloffSpotLight: The script creates the spotlight and a couple of additional shading nodes. Deleting the light from the outliner will not remove those nodes from the scene. To get rid of the nodes, manually delete the whole network, using the hyperShade or use "delete unused nodes" after deleting the light.
• There are two more circle-shaped manipulators, both set to zero. Don't touch them, they don't have any effect. Also leave the checkbox for "Use Decay Regions" unchecked in the attribute editor. Activating that attribute will result in unpredictable light dsitribution.