I’m working on a scene where I use final gather and a few spotlights to create shadows and the illusion of sun shining trough a window.  I used this in previous projects, but this time something weird happens.

If I render the scene with all lights templated, final gather works fine. But as soon as I untemplate the spotlights and render again, all light in the scene comes from the spotlights, and it is like final gather just doesn’t work anymore. And as soon as I remove the spotlights final gather works again.

The script editor shows this message:

// Error: The mentalrayLightexponentCtrl control cannot be used with the attribute “spotLightShape1.exponent”. The attribute type is not compatible with the control type. //
// Error: The mentalrayLightcausticPhotonsCtrl control cannot be used with the attribute “spotLightShape1.causticPhotons”. The attribute type is not compatible with the control type. //
// Error: The mentalrayLightglobIllPhotonsCtrl control cannot be used with the attribute “spotLightShape1.globIllPhotons”. The attribute type is not compatible with the control type. //
// Error: The mentalrayLightsmapResolutionCtrl control cannot be used with the attribute “spotLightShape1.smapResolution”. The attribute type is not compatible with the control type. //
// Error: The mentalrayLightsmapSamplesCtrl control cannot be used with the attribute “spotLightShape1.smapSamples”. The attribute type is not compatible with the control type. //
// Error: The mentalrayLightsmapSoftnessCtrl control cannot be used with the attribute “spotLightShape1.smapSoftness”. The attribute type is not compatible with the control type. //
// Error: The mentalrayLightsmapBiasCtrl control cannot be used with the attribute “spotLightShape1.smapBias”. The attribute type is not compatible with the control type. //
// Error: The mentalrayLightsmapDetailSamplesCtrl control cannot be used with the attribute “spotLightShape1.smapDetailSamples”. The attribute type is not compatible with the control type. //
// Error: The mentalrayLightsmapDetailAccuracyCtrl control cannot be used with the attribute “spotLightShape1.smapDetailAccuracy”. The attribute type is not compatible with the control type. //

Does anyone recognises this and/or knows what could be wrong?

by the way; I’m using maya 8.0