Q:  I'm looking for a way to link a Free spotlight to mesh specific area,  i mean :

 i want to animate a Street light componed by a kind of tube and a globe by a bend modifier
my problem is that i don't manage to link a spotlight and a cone (low rendering time volumetric light) to the globe only (i don't want to bend the cones)
(6/3/98) a

A: It is really a nice question... here is the answer.

As far as I can imagine this will work only with MAX2
(At least I don't know any other way that would work with MAX 1.x)

I created a small sample scene:

A group of a Sphere and a Cylinder with animated Bend modifier over the group.
A Dummy object and a FreeSpot.
Selected the Dummy, opened the Motion Tab, and set Position controller to Pos.Script.
In the script, entered:

$Dummy01.pos = getvert $Sphere01 1

This means: Take the first vertex of the Sphere (the top one in this case)
and put its position into the position of the Dummy.

$Dummy01 and $Sphere01 are the NAMES of the objects.

Then I linked the Light to the Dummy.

This way, you can link any number of objects to the Dummy, and have their own animations
independent from the parent's movements....


Additions:

Note that the animation will update the MAXScript controller only when the TimeSlider is moving. It will not update when you chnage modifier parameters.