MDLAreaLight
A light source that illuminates a 3D scene from an area with a specific shape.
Declaration
class MDLAreaLightOverview
Unlike other light sources that illuminate a scene from a single point or direction, an area light has a specific shape. The shape of an area light is a two-dimensional figure in the xy-plane of the light’s local coordinate space, and its illumination is directed in the negative z-axis direction (spreading out from that direction according to the inherited innerConeAngle and outerConeAngle properties).
Both the MDLAreaLight and MDLPhotometricLight classes can describe lights with interesting shapes. An area light offers a simpler design that can be implemented with better rendering performance, and a photometric light offers design that better models real-world light fixtures at the cost of higher computational complexity.