Light filters are arbitrary shaders that can modify, or filter, the incoming illumination from a given light. Light filters are just regular shaders attached to a light's "filters" parameter. Compared to an old-style RenderMan light shader, the only thing that an Arnold light filter cannot do is modify the light-emitting geometry and its associated sampling.

 

Arnold currently ships with four built-in light filter shaders, which are explained in detail in the MtoA docs. Here is an example using the built-in gobo shader:
image
{
 name myimage
 filename polkadots.jpg
}

gobo
{
 name mygobo
 slidemap mytexture
 rotate 30
 scale_s 2
 scale_t 2
}

spot_light
{
 name myspot
 ...
 filters mygobo
 # you can also attach a stack of filters:
 # filters 3 1 NODE gobo1 gobo2 gobo3
}

 

But you can also write your own light filter. Basically you can use some shaderglobals inputs (such as the light direction sg->Ld,  the distance sg->Ldist, or, for a spot light, sg->u/v) and overwrite the unoccluded light intensity sg->Liu in-place.  Below is a simple example that modulates the light intensity with a Perlin noise procedural texture:

#include <ai.h>
#include <strings.h>
AI_SHADER_NODE_EXPORT_METHODS(SimpleLightFilterMethods);
node_parameters { }
node_initialize { }
node_update { }
node_finish { }

shader_evaluate
{
   AtPoint2 p = {sg->u, sg->v};
   sg->Liu *= (AiPerlin2(p * 50) + 0.5f);
}

node_loader
{
   if (i > 0)
      return false;
   node->methods     = SimpleLightFilterMethods;
   node->output_type = AI_TYPE_RGB;
   node->name        = "simple_light_filter";
   node->node_type   = AI_NODE_SHADER;
   strcpy(node->version, AI_VERSION);
   return true;
}
simple light filter.ass 
options
{
 AA_samples 5
 GI_diffuse_depth 2
 GI_diffuse_samples 3
 background mysky
}
persp_camera
{
 name mycamera
 position 5 3.0 5
 look_at 0 0.8 1
 up 0 1 0
 fov 30
}
sky
{
 name mysky
 color 0.8 0.9 1.0
 intensity 0.5
}
lambert
{
 name mylambert
 Kd 0.5
}
plane
{
 name myplane
 normal 0 1 0
 shader mylambert
}
sphere
{
 name mysphere1
 center 0 1 0
 radius 1
 shader mylambert
}
sphere
{
 name mysphere2
 center 0 1 2
 radius 1
 shader mylambert
}
spot_light
{
 name mylight
 look_at 0 1 0
 position 4 5 1
 intensity 3.141
 color 1.0 0.7 0.1
 cone_angle 65
 penumbra_angle 2
 exposure 6
 filters my_light_filter
}

simple_light_filter
{
 name my_light_filter
}

 

The above example produces the following image:

Without simple light filter
With simple light filter

 

 

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