The following info is from an article I came across while doing a search on information on IES Lights.




Understanding IES Lights by Atul Dravid, India



IES stands for Illuminating Engineering Society. IES standard file format was created for the electronic transfer of photometric data over the web. It has been widely used by many lighting manufacturers and is one of the industry standards in photometric data distribution. An IES file is basically the measurement of distribution of light (intensity) stored in ASCII format. You can think of it as a digital profile of a real world light. In 3d software like 3ds max it can be used for creating lights with shapes and physically accurate form.

IES light files are created by many major lighting manufacturers and can be downloaded freely from their sites. One of such lighting manufacturer is Lithonia Lighting ([Link to www.lithonia.com)] which has an extensive library of IES files in different categories.

You can use an IES Viewer to view these files in a diagrammatic representation for easy understanding.

I've used 3DS Max for about 7 years now and I have never used Photometric lighting, but these are awesome.

I have upload the viewer and the Luthonia IES lights to my site if you would like to have them. The viewer is great for browsing through the lights before attempting them in Max. There is a render button on the viewer. Check it out, you won't be disappointed.. Especially if you do a lot of interior design work. It's as close to realistic light as you can get.

Viewer: [Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]
Light Files: [Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]

Enjoy! and let me know what you think.

To access the IES for use in Max, Select Photometric for you lights, Pick an object type, scroll down to Light Distribution(Type) and select Photometric Web. From here you can browse for your files and make any rotation adjustments.

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Rick

[Link to www.3dartconcepts.com]