I was experimenting with different light sources in Carrara (ver 7) the other day. And I wanted a soft fill light, similar to what photographers use in studios sometimes. You know, like a light box that softly light up the model without casting any sharper kind of shadows. So I simply created a plane primitive and made it glow with the Anything Glows light.

Then I thought to myself, wait a minute, there's something called Shape Light. The manual doesn't really explain the shape light, it sort of just mention it. But once added to the scene it appears as if you can make it rectangular shaped, which should be very similar to my above attempt to make a plane glow. So that would be my first question, am I right in assuming that a rectangular shape light is similar to make a plane primitive glow with Anything Glows?

Because it just seem to almost work the same way but not quite. I get sort of angled shadows, indicating that the rectangular shape light surface is in fact not flat. The light source more resembles the bulb light, where the surface is rounded and emitt light from the center rather than in one straight direction.

And question number two, how does one control the direction of the shape light? The object for the shape light looks exactly like a bulb light in the 3D view, and a bulb light has no direction. Maybe the shape light doesn't have any direction either?