[giacob]

is there someboby able to explain the meaning and the practical use of this option set in the generic options sub panel of maxwell render option panel of LW?

[WillMartin]

I'm just guessing, but since "Attenuation Scale" is right below "Global Scale," perhaps if you want to increase the global scl this allows you to increase the attenuation easily/semi-automatically, without you having to go into each surface (mwm) and manually change the atten values; I would test this theory myself to try to confirm it but I'm clogged doing other stuff on my 3D computer this moment. I'm also guessing that these options (Global scl + Atten scl) are ones that most people will never be touching most of the time but that they're there to be a lifesaver for some strange situations (such as someone giving you a scene to render with a thousand objects where everything is out of scale).

Again, all just guessing on my part.

[giacob]

isnt there anybody of nl team that can give an anser.. or i have to siuppose tana not even them know the use and the meaning of this misterious parametre?

[Mihnea Balta]

It's as WillMartin said. The attenuation values for all the materials in the scene will be multiplied by the number you put in there when they are exported.

This is useful if you have a scene that's not modeled to scale, but the transparent materials are already set up so that they look right. If you use the global scale to fix DOF issues (for example) you will break the transparent materials; the attenuation scale can then be used to fix those materials by setting it to the same value as the global scale. We don't do the attenuation scaling automatically because there are other scenarios where you don't want it to happen.

Anyway, it's very unlikely that anybody will ever need this. It was very easy to do so we added it just in case somebody will have this sort of problems, sometime.