mr Sky and mr Sun

Use these lights with FG on in Mental Ray, or your shadows will all go to black.

These 2 lights are meant to be paired together.

Note -- in Max 9, this became available choice as part of the Daylight system:

In Max 9, from the modify tab choose choose mr Sky and mr Sun ...

Back to the manual setup of the 2 lights:

The skylight will automatically created an environment map:

If not, go get it, and instance it in the Material editor to see the controls.

Use exposure control with exterior daylight on:

If you pull back your view, you can see how the map creates both sky and ground colors, which you can control:

Turn on sun shadows:

Note how the skylight affects the shadow color:

You can turn back the saturation here:

Now soften the shadow by increasing both sofness and samples in the sun:

For fun, replace the gray on the teapot with Mental Ray DGS (Diffuse Gloss Specular) ... you can see the reflected break between the blue sky and the gray ground ... this setup is useful for cars, etc.