Differences in Lighting

Lighting types Maya includes the same primary light types as LightWave except for the Linear Light type. LightWave's Distant Light type is called Directional in Maya. Maya also offers an Ambient light type, which is similar to a point light but can brighten all surfaces in the scene regardless of its location.

Maya does not offer global illumination , as LightWave does. Maya also does not have caustics built in with raytracing , but there's a downloadable utility for getting caustics on AliasWavefront's Web site.

Maya's raytraced and mapped shadows, controlled with the Attribute Editor, are similar to those in LightWave. As in LightWave's Properties panel, volumetrics and flares are assigned via the Attribute Editor when adjusting a light.