HDR Light Studio software provides 3D artists with a new way to light 3D imagery. Paint your shot with lights. The lighting process is now easy, fast, precise, creative and enjoyable. HDR Light Studio builds lighting that is used by your existing 3D software and renderer. By adding HDR Light Studio, 3D artists become more productive and image quality improves.

Interactive Image Based Lighting
The dynamic HDRI environment map is updated in real-time as lights are added and adjusted, as is the Render View that is lit by it.

HDRI Area Lights
HDR Light Studio can also create and control 3D Area Lights / Emitters inside your 3D software. These are positioned with the same intuative interface, clicking and dragging on the 3D model.

Use Standalone or Connected
HDR Light Studio can be used standalone - load a 3D scene and produce the perfect HDRI map.

Light Sources: Procedural
HDR Light Studio is best known for creating studio lighting – especially suited to reflective materials. Procedural lights can be precisely controlled and positioned to create a wide variety of lighting effects.

Light Sources: Images
For the most realistic lighting effects – load HDR images as light sources in HDR Light Studio. Image based light sources bring high levels of realism with subtle details and imperfections seen in reflections.

Includes a Library of Light Sources
HDR Light Studio includes a library of over 200 high quality HDR photographs of soft boxes, spot lights, windows and even clouds.

Render View & LightPaint
The Render View is a key feature of HDR Light Studio's lighting interface. Lights are positioned by clicking and dragging on the Render View - we call this patented process LightPaint.

Area Lights
Area Lights are controlled with LightPaint and are compatible with 3ds Max, Maya, Cinema 4D and MODO.

Handles Huge Scenes
The Render View and LightPaint remain fast even with huge scenes. For example this 3D scene has 19,514,622 polygons.

Matching Photography
When blending photography and CG imagery, matching the lighting between the photographic content and the CG elements is key to a successful and believable image. If a HDRI map of the location has not been captured then a lighting setup needs building from scratch. HDR Light Studio makes this process easy and enabling the rapid creation of a suitable lighting environment.

Enhancing Reality
When reality isn’t enough. Load HDRI maps shot on location and add additional light sources to bring your subject to life. Just like on a real photoshoot, beauty lights are added to make your subject the star of the show.

Procedural Sky
HDR Light Studio includes a procedural sky shader. Replace the sky on an existing HDRI map and use an alpha ramp to control the horizon position and softness. Drag and drop the included Cloud preset images onto the sky for added realism. The sun disc can be increased in size whilst maintaining its overall lighting contribution, allowing for creative decisions about the sun scale. The sun disc has a controllable soft edge.

Mix Up Your Maps
Load more than one HDRI map into HDR Light Studio and use the alpha ramp to blend between them. Use saturation adjustments and color filtering, via blend modes, to take control of color and create a better match. Enabling you to get more out of your existing HDRI collection.

More than Lights
The HDR Canvas is a compositor for HDR and LDR content, supporting a range of image formats, mappings and blend modes.

Portable Lighting
HDRI maps are the ultimate portable lighting format. They can be used with different renderers and produce predictable and accurate results. Especially with physically based rendering.

Industry Standards
VFX artists will be pleased to know HDR Light Studio has progressed to embrace some industry standards. HDR Light Studio uses OpenColorIO color management and supports loading Alembic scene files. In order to efficiently handle very large image files, HDR Light Studio will automatically convert image files to mip-mapped and tiled images, saving them as .tx files. When using .tx files, HDR Light Studio only loads the image resolution and area needed – this vastly improves image load times and performance.

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