Originally posted by ctbram when I did a default settings render the result was totally black?!? Then I fiddled with various settings and use maya software, maya hardware and mental ray and no matter what I did the scene with just an area light was always just totally nlack as though there was no light at all? If tried al the other type lights one at a time and they all rendered fine but any scene I tried an area light in by it self was total blackness. Do I have a bug with Maya and area lights on my machine or is there some magic incantasion I need to learn to make area lights have an effect on a scene? I am a newb with maya so sorry if my questions seen dumb. I doubt there's a bug... check that your area light is pointing in the right direction - the direction of light is indicated by the perpendicular line coming from the light object in your scene. I just quickly created a scene file for you to download and compare....