A spotlight can be directed towards an object.
A spotlight distribution casts a focused beam of light like a flashlight, a follow spot in a theater, or a headlight. A spotlight emits a directional cone of light. You can control the direction of the light and the size of the cone. Like a point light, a spot light can be manually set to attenuate its intensity with distance. However, a spotlight's intensity will also always attenuate based on the angle relative to the spot's target vector. This attenuation is controlled by the hotspot and falloff angles of the spotlight. Spotlights are useful for highlighting specific features and areas in your model. A free spotlight (FREESPOT) is similar to spotlight. A spotlight has target properties.
Spotlights in Photometric Workflow
In photometric workflow, the hotspot intensity falls to 50 percent. The hotspot for standard lighting is at 100 percent. At its falloff angle, intensity of the spotlight falls to zero. Additional properties become available for a point light when LIGHTINGUNITS is set to 1 (International SI units) or 2 (American units) for photometric lighting:
The additional information about these properties are available under Lighting Properties. The following image is an example of a photometric spotlight and lighting properties palette with the photometric properties outlined: