Linear point light question

HamEinar

Is there some magic button which can be pressed to make the geometry of a linear point light cylinder display in the viewport? I'm trying to make cylinder lpls as lighttubes in fixtures (because I have read somewhere in here that using mesh as emitters puts more strain on the render), but this involves having to start a render (or changing viewport to Iray to get the tubes to fit the fixtures) since no matter what I enter in the diameter and width of the lpl cylinder, there's just the ball in the viewport..

Richard Haseltine

Linear refers to the way the light falls off - in proportion to distance from the light, instead of the physically correct in proportion to the square of the distance from the light. It doesn't refer to the shape of the light source I'm afraid. A light tube would need to be done with an area light shader - such as the uberArea shader included with DS. This all assumes that you are using 3Delight to render, of course - linear light fall off is not available in Iray.

HamEinar

Damn, I thought I had a great idea there... :-/ - Here's a sample of the viewport, with LPL to the right and PL to the left - regular viewport & Iray.. Scene only, identical settings for LPL and PL (and they look pretty similar)

So I should just give up on it, and use mesh lighting instead?