mental ray 3.10 features list.

[bart]

In Maya, having both high and low samples is not something new.

What you want is the light samples to be at or above the samples in the user ibl shader. The user ibl shader takes care of its own importance sampling, adjusting samples through a variety of light paths. The samples on the light itself shouldn't be cutting that handling short. In other words, if you set user ibl env samples to 10, keep the light samples at 10 or greater for both high and low. Then, user ibl will adjust at each trace depth for you.

[Remydrh]

You can find an explanation of the controls in the area light for Maya here:

http://elementalray.wordpress.com/20...ea-lights-101/