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This infinite light simulates a bright distant light source like from the sun or moon. This light bathes the entire scene and treats the light as-if the rays are parallel by default (this can be altered in the settings below).

Only rotation (direction) will be applied. Translation and scaling of this light will be ignored.







Scales the contribution of this light linearly. The light intensity is computed using a physically-based control. The default light begins at a high value of 50000.0.





Angle Extent

Opening angle of the light source in degrees (Sun=0.53). Higher values soften the shadow edges (light rays become less parallel) while lower values make it sharper. Larger values increase shadow softness by increasing the angle of its light. Note that increasing this parameter also increases the amount of light in the scene and you may need to significantly reduce the light intensity/exposure to compensate or you may use Area Normalize to prevent changes in illumination.




The color of the emitted light.



Enable Temperature

Turns color temperature on or off. Below we use the following temperatures: 6500K (default), 4000K, and lastly 8500K.


Color Temperature







Emission Focus

Off-axis cosine power exponent to shape the emission. This controls the spread of the light.  Higher number will start focusing the light towards the center and thus narrowing the light spread. For the PxrDistantLight it will appear to dim the lighting as you increase the parameter. To alter the shadowing to appear larger/softer you should use Angle Extent.


Emission Focus Tint

Off-axis light color tint. This tints the emission in the falloff region starting from the off-angle direction of the light towards the center. By default, the tint color is black (none). For the PxrDistantLight this will tint the color of the light. Higher Emission Focus settings will increase the saturation of the chosen color.


Specular Amount




Diffuse Amount









Enable Shadows

Enable raytraced shadows. Below is on (default) and off.


Shadow Color

The color of the shadows cast by emitted light.

.0 0.0 0.0

Shadow Distance




Shadow Falloff



Shadow Falloff Gamma



Trace Subset



Don't Trace Subset








When normalize is enabled, the amount of light contributed to the scene will not change as you change the angleExtent of the light source. This makes it easier to adjust highlight size without changing scene lighting.


Trace Light Paths



Thin Shadow

Enable thin shadow and disable refraction caustics for this light. This parameter will ignored if Trace Light Paths is enabled. This is a non-physical control that creates "fake" colored shadows for transmissive objects without needing to generate photons for caustics. Below we go from On (default) to Off (opaque shadowing). Notice we lose the colored shadows and interior colored reflection choosing Off, but we gain some render speed instead.


Light Samples

Specifies an override of the number of light samples to be taken for this light source. If set to something other than zero, it will override the sampling performed by the integrator. You might find need for this if you have unsolvable noise from this light and need more samples.


Light Group



Importance Multiplier
