Lights are objects that    do not belong to a particular file, they are known internally to 3DTop only.    3DTop allows you to create as many lights as OpenGL provides (usually 16 ).
An important thing to know is that usually with each light you add, 3DTop will slow down a bit. So, don't create too many lights, 2 or 3 lights is often enough.
From the August-2001 version of 3DTop you also have the possibility to create 3 different types of light (see below). The "Infinite directional light" has the least effect on the speed of 3DTop.

It has the following popup-menu items:

- Grab this.
A little robot will attach itself to the object. This way you can select(grab) several object at the same time and do things on all of them at the same time.

- Spot focus.
This means that with this function you can change the width of the light-beam. If you choose this you'll see a new object on your screen that is attached to the light you're editing: the "focus-chooser". This object allows you to choose the width of the beam by clicking with the right mouse-button in the triangle. If you click near the point at the right of the triangle, the width of the light-beam becomes smaller, if you click near the -wider- back the width becomes greater.

- Choose color.
This means that with this function you can change to color of the light-beam. If you choose this you'll see a new object on your screen that is attached to the light you're editing: the "color-chooser". This object allows you to choose the color of the beam by clicking with the right mouse-button in the cube. Notice that you can rotate the cube also, this will allow you to choose from every color of the spectrum. Underneath the color-cube you'll see a strip that allows you to set the brightness of the color you've chosen, use the right mouse-button here also. When you're done deselect "Choose color" in the menu to remove the color-chooser.

- Set Spot-effect.
The spot-effect is the amount of specular light contribution of the spot to the reflections on a surface. You can see this best on 3d-models that have shiny surfaces, when you increase the spot-effect you'll see some "hotspots" on the surface, here is an example of a reflection without and with specular lighting contribution:

If you select this menu-item you'll see a bar with colors from white to black, if you click with your right mouse-button somewhere on this bar the specular lighting contribution changes according to the whiteness of the part you clicked on : white means more, black means less.

- Point light towards viewing direction.
Great for pointing lights in the direction you're looking at.


Then 3 menu-items follow for choosing what type of light you have:

- Spot light.
The light is a spot with a beam-width that can be adjusted (spot-focus).

- Infinite directional light.
The light has a direction, but no beam-width and is infinitely far away, just like the sun.

- Positional light (Bulb).
Its light shines in all directions and is attenuated the farther away it gets from the light-source.


- "Un"moveable.
When you select this, the object can not be moved anymore by clicking on it with the left mouse-button and dragging the object. All other functions remain working, so you can actually still move the object by grabbing it and moving the robot, hence the "Un".

- Spinning.
Each clock can spin around it's rotation axis by choosing this function. You'll notice that the mouse-pointer changes its shape into a left/right arrow, this means that by moving the mouse left or right you change the speed of spinning. When you are content with the speed you've chosen, press the left-mouse-button once and the icons keeps spinning with this speed. If you would like to cancel the whole operation press the right mouse-button once.

- Delete.
This will delete the clock from 3DTop. No warning will be displayed.