The ambient / reflective occlusion map in mentalray offers a lot of control over the look of your ambient occlusion.

However, the skylight object, whose shadows are basically an ambient occlusion calculation, are missing a lot of these features.

Could we please have several features from the Occlusion Map copied over to the skylight controls? More specifically...

1) Samples (So we can get smoother results)
2) Spread (To adjust the edge of the skylight shadows)
3) Max distance (To further adjust the edge of the skylight shadows)
4) Dark (so we can tint or lighten the shadows)

This doesn't even have to make the skylight mentalray specific, since any renderer could use the values in the skylight to run its own occlusion algorithm, the controls I ask for are things that are pretty universal in all renderers.

Go here for pictures of the potential interface...

http://www.neilblevins.com/cg_tools/cg_wishlist/3dsmax/wishlist_occlusion_map_skylight.htm