Attached Link: Digital Lighting & Rendering, Second Edition

*"Vue can do it, Max can do it (and I assume XSI as well)"*

Carrara 6 Pro has selective lights as well. On a quick look, I don't see it in DS, though maybe one of the plug-ins provides it. It's one of the things I keep meaning to try in Vue - I can see how it would make some things easier. If BB or SM would do it for Poser, I'm sure it would be a welcome addition.

Here's what Jeremy Birn (Pixar Lighting TD) says:

"If you have a light that you only want for a specific purpose, such as adding highlights to a character's eyes, then you can use light linking (also called selective lighting), which allows you to associate specific lights with specific objects. You could create a point light, set it to emit only specular illumination, and then link the light to the character's eyeballs. If this light is kept reasonably close to the camera position, you're guaranteed that the character's eyes will always have highlights when it looks toward the camera. And because of light linking, you'd know those highlights won't affect anything else in the scene.

You can also use light linking to gain more precise control over how different objects are lit. If you have a light illuminating many objects in your scene, you might find that it looks good on most of the objects, but somehow appears to light other objects with the wrong intensity, color, or angle. Instead of settling for a compromise, you can make a second copy of your light, and link it to the objects that weren't well lit. Once you unlink the old light from those objects, you can adjust the second light in however you want.

Light linking is a marvelously powerful cheat, but can make an unrealistic image if you aren't careful. Whenever you set up a scene with light linking, you need to test-render it and make sure that what you've done makes sense and doesn't depart too obviously from what's plausible."

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance." - H. L. Mencken