The first thing I noticed when working with the Doom 3 sdk was the rectangular point lights. Here is an image to show you what I mean.
[attachmentid=14706]

The light falls off at different values on the X Y and Z axis.

Would there be any way to get rectangular point lights into animation master? I have found these to be great for area lighting to fake radiosity better than standar sphereical point lights.

Here is what the light looks like when it is rendered.
[attachmentid=14707]

I had to increase the fall off distance for the light because the first image was to show the shape of the light and this one was to show how the light rendered.

Here are all of the properties for the light.
[attachmentid=14708]

The image to the bottom right is the projection image. The current one would simulate an elipitcal point light in the same deminsions as the rectangular point light.

Thinking aloud here... It probaly can be done in A:M... I don't know how...

But here's what I'm thinking:

If you rendered the scene all dark (like where it's not lit in your scene) and imported it to photoshop, you could use an adjustment layer with a gradient trapezoid in the corner of the floor, and on the walls in the corner. you could then slightly overexpose in the adjustment layer.

Now, I think you can do that in A:M with maps of some sort. I think you might also be able to do it in A:M composite.

But, since I am not even at my A:M pc, i can't try anything, and don't really have time to anyway... but I thought maybe that thinking out loud like this might steer you in the direction....

I look forward to seeing what you come up with... you and your brother are doing fantastic stuff with A:M... keep it up!

oh, and BTW, I can see the X from the light in the floor of the DOOM render... "that ain't right" prolly has to do with the realtime render or something else I don't know.

It's due to the texture on the light itself. You can set it to the defaul value which has normal fall offs.

If you have a scene that is entirely black, you wouldn't be able to get any color data from it. So brightening up an area with photoshop wouldn't work very well, if at all.

a gel on a light could give you any shape you want. .

I did a quick test and Light Gels don't seem to work with point lights.

Under my tests with klieg lights, light gels do not work the way you would expect with radiosity. If you had a blue light gel, but the light color was set to default white, white light would be bounced around the room even when there is a blue light on the wall that is being light up by the klieg with the light gel on it.

This is what a black light gel on a klieg produced when I aimed the klieg directly at the end wall.
[attachmentid=14716]

This image should not contain any visible photons; however, radiosity acts as if the light were under default conditions and does not store the first bounce, which leaves the image of light without a source.

Well, of course, that's true. But you may be able to do an evenly lit (but dimly lit) scene, and burn in the area you want lighter.

Or render twice, once lit, once dimly. composite the two as you wish after saving each as a layer.

Now, all that said, I know it's fakery, but If you want to do it, ya do what ya gotta do.

perhaps, but you explicitly said you were trying to not do real radiosity

You'd be able to use square lights to fake radoisity. But if you wanted to have a light that gave a stylized look to a scene, you'd want to use a rectangular light because it has a square fallow look to it. I can always go about a scene in different ways, but having more types of lights gives more possiblities.

aside from proportions... what difference between a square light and a rectangular one?

I uses square and rectangular just to give an idea that it's not a circular light. The lights themselves are rectangular in the three different axises.

Off of the topic of rectangular lights, I still thing having surfaces that cast photons would be very awsome. Though you'd have to set a lot of paramiters for the surfect (falloff, intensity, ect...)