Carrara 7.2
I'm trying to set up an eye light for The Girl. If I add a spot and set the "Restrict lighting to" option to "Only rEye" the light has no effect. I linked it to only light the whole figure and it works. If I restrict it to any sub-object, even head or neck it doesn't have any effect.
Anybody can confirm this?

This is because the selectors are actually for the bones, not the geometry. The work-around is to insert a target helper object and make it a child of the eye. You can also make the light a child of the eye as well so it follows the head if you reposed the characters. The final step is to use a Point-At behavior for the light and select the target helper object for the eye. Just adjust the spread of the to remain on the eye.

Mark

Man, Mark, I've been following this forum and noticed how quickly you respond to the messages. This is quite incredible. Thanks.
I'm a bit surprised about the lights being linked to bones. What if I have a sphere and acube and I want to set separate lights for each object? This is kinda basic linking and I would not expected to have to have a right for every object in the scene. Just to be clear, I'm not concerned about keeping the light aimed at the eyes, that's fairly simple, I'm trying to avoid lighting the rest of the face. The target helper object would help me to aim it but then I will have to rely on a narrow beam and wide feathering of the cone to avoid lighting the eye socket. Am I correct?
Also, is there a way of setting up a light to only create specular effects without diffusion?

Thanks.

 Hi,

You just happened to catch me working today so I'm actually near the computer!

The link-to function will work with regular 3D geometry like spheres or cubes.

However, with figures, the figure is one big piece of 3D geometry - there is no eye or hand or head. All of the selectors that you see in the properties palette are the named bones that then influence the geometry. So, only in the case of figures, does selecting something like "eye" not work. 

For tight eye lights, I'll usually create a mask and apply it to the spotlight to further shape the lighting.

For pure specular effect on eyes, it's usually better to simply create a custom texture map for the eye using a specific texture for the spec highlight. This can then also be dropped into the glow channel for a sparkle while on shadow sides.

All good advices, thanks again Mark.

Very good tip Mark!

Yes, I tried it and it worked remarkably well, with very limited overhead.