How to use a directional light

When a light source is infinitely far away, the rays coming from the light source are almost parallel to each other and they all come from the same direction. This type of light is called a directional light. A fine example of a directional light is our sun. In Magic Poser, you should use a directional light to model natural sunlight. The directional light shoots parallel rays uniformly across the whole scene.

This picture from LearnOpenGL illustrates very well how a directional light works:

Change the direction of a directional light

The most important factor that you can change with a directional light - as you guessed it - is its direction. To change the direction of the directional light, simply rotate the light in the same way as we already learned in Common actions for all types of lights:

• Tap to select the light, and the action menu of the light will show up at the bottom.
• Select rotate action  from the action menu.
• Rotate the light by dragging on the rotation circles or dragging the slider.

Move the directional light

Since the directional light shines rays uniformly across the whole scene, the location of the light itself does not matter. The only thing that matters is the direction. This also means that you can move the 3D light object to anywhere in the scene you want (refer to our Common actions for all types of lights on how to do that), without affecting the end lighting result. You can use this to your advantage so that your 3D light object does not get in the way when you are manipulating other objects in the scene!