Blender Light Manager - Light list

Coding Released Scripts and Themes
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#1

Hi guys!
I’m sharing my first addon for lighting.

It works like this:
VLM|video

I created it because I grew frustrated trying to adjust Blender lights using a linear slider.
Lights in the real world work typically in an fstop scale, were +1 fstops doubles the light intensity and -1 fstops halves the light intensity. That’s why the linear slider is so frustrating to use, it can have a massive difference or minuscule depending on the base value of the light and to which side you are adjusting the light.

This Blender addon provides you with a light list with helpful controls to tweak your lighting. And a fstop scale for a more intuitive control.

You can also isolate a light by using the solo button. Or easily change light type and color.

Tweak your lighting as a photographer or cinematographer would!!

LM
LM284×506 25.9 KB

Get it here:
https://gum.co/DQNYI

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Photographer - Camera Exposure, White balance, Autofocus and Physical Lights
LIghtdesk helps you fine-tune your lighting setups with ease
#2

Good idea, would be cool if it would work together with photographer 3.

2 Likes
#3

I never used photographer 3, but from what I see from the screenshots it should be compatible, I’m not adding any special features to the blender lights, merely managing and tweaking them easier. :wink:

I updated the addon to work with 2.83 and 2.91 in case someone was getting any warning installing it.

1 Like
#4

No Photographer 3 comes with new light models like: Power ( advanced), Candela, Lumen, Artistic. Blender Light Manager - Light List works only with the default (Power) of Blender.
But maybe asking @chafouin is the better idea. I just want to set the light in f-stops.

#5

Ah ok I misunderstood!
Yeah I kept power as unit, I have the fstop buttons at the bottom (-1, +1), since they are always relative to the current light power/Candela/Lumen. The light manager is more focused in quickly changing the relative light / light ration on the scene, not so much about reproducing real world intensities.

Think of it more like if you are in a movie set, you look at the frame and decide to raise the main light 1 stop and reduce the fill half a stop. This addon lets you do that without fiddling with sliders or doing math in your head. As well as quickly being able to isolate a light to see how much is contributing to a scene :wink:

2 Likes
#6

Yes, that’s exactly what I like about your addon. But if you don’t work in Photographer in (normal) power mode, you have to convert changes of the light with a button in Photographer. But that’s exactly what doesn’t work with Blender Light Manager - Light List.

#7

Oh, I see, yeah, that would need to be on the Photographer addon side since they are using custom units.

1 Like
#8

I bet it’s a click on that lamp icon on the left.
A question: when you ‘solo’ a light in your panel and then you want to ‘solo’ another one, do you have to ‘unsolo’ the first one, or is it just the matter of clicking on the second’s icon?
I’m asking because I used to use Gaffer add-on just for this ‘solo’ feature, but clicking and un-clicking is very uncomfortable.
And also, does your add-on take meshlights into account?

1 Like
#9

Yup, it’s the lamp icon :wink:

Hmm you bring a good point, I can add that feature, atm it acts as a “switch” so clicking on any lights solo will unhide all lights if in solo. AKA you have to click 2 times on a second light to isolate it.

Not atm, no. But I can check if that would be feasible when I get a bit of time. I want to keep the addon simple, but that would be a nice feature :slight_smile:

#10

Well I ended quitting using Gaffer because of this: two clicks kill the usefullness of the addon imho. Currently I just try to organize lights collections in order to be able to isolate lights as needed, but a real solo-mode would be very useful.
Ideal feature would be: when you click a solo button it switches to off any light, regardless if a solo mode is already in place or not. And it makes solo the selected light. Saving that click is the deal.
Can you take a look and see if it’s not a big deal to make it work like this?
Thanks!

#11

Here I am again! :slight_smile:
I’ve been actually trying the addon…
It’s cool, I like the f-stop feature a lot! (btw what is the reason to not have only “actual stop” with correct values and rip off that option checkbox?)
About the request I was making, it’s not a big deal, afterall if I double click on a new solo icon it does switch quickly to the new solo mode, which is what is not possible in gaffer atm.
Nice job.
Only one caveat: the panel doesn’t highlight the selected lamp, which is quite needed I believe. (also a button to select from the panel would be nice)
Thanks for this little gift

#12

I just updated the script. Now you can switch the solo light with just one click.
I also added an icon on the active light.

Just download the updated script on the same link :wink:

I renamed it now to make it more clear, basically is a blender peculiarity.
For some reason Blender > filmic seems to only have 5 stops of dynamic range.
That means that with five +1 stop clicks you go from black to pure white.

Typically a high-end camera has 12-15 stops of range.
cameras-dynamic-range

I might be wrong here, I just did a quick “by eye” test, but that would put blender “camera sensor” as an extremely low-end camera. (not relevant if rendering linear).
That checkbox gives you less of an increase/decrease, so a light would have 10 - 12 “stops” of range counteracting the blender peculiarity.

So I left it as a personal option, so you can decide if you want 5 “actual” fstops or 10-12 “tweaked” ones.

In the end its the final image that counts, using that checkbox just gives you slightly smaller increases that better match blender’s “sensor”, actual fstop bigger/faster increases.

1 Like
#13

Thumbs up sir! Thank you a whole lot!
I’m gonna make good use of this addon.
May I suggest a tiny cosmetic thing?
In lines 149, 160 and 165 turning
row = layout.row()
into
row = box.row()
makes the layout be more clear, with each light ecapsulated in its own box
edit:
also, in line 145
bpy.context.object.select_get() seems to work better than bpy.context.active_object because it turns the icon off in case you deselect (Alt+A or click in void space).

…anyway, thank you again!

1 Like
#14

Check the allocations, and you’ll see that the rendered dynamic range is precisely -10 EV to +6.5 EV when R=G=B, and a further -10 EV to +15 EV covering the gamut compressed range.

Your math is well off for calculating EV from radiometric-like RGB values, or you are applying math to the nonlinear encoded for display values, at which point the math would be quite obviously wrong in terms of the source radiometric-RGB values, and even quite wrong with respect to the dynamic range a display can achieve.

Jonathan Lampel did a proper bit of research and calculations on lighting and how values work. I would encourage everyone to look into his effort.

#15

Hi trow_s,
Sorry but your purpose with this comment is?

My math is not wrong, stops / EV are a quite simple and well-understood metric, every +1 stop, light intensity doubles. It’s widely used by photographers and cinematographers,
And like I mentioned, this affects nothing in image quality, dynamic range merely a measure of where the black point and white point is relative to eachother.
With adjusted light ratios you can obtain the same image be it low-DR or High-DR. Or just render linear and then choose what dynamic range and color profile you want to have after.

I just added an option to this addon because I’ve found that the +1 fstop had a bit too strong an effect on blender (be it because of the default range, color profile curve, or other reason), so to give the option of smaller increases for those who prefer it.

#16

That should answer your first question, which sheds some light on your following comment:

It is quite possible that your math is incorrect if your claim is as above “5 stops of dynamic range”. You’d need to explain your findings though, and what encoding they are based on.

It’s wise to make sure that your math is being applied correctly first, and it would at least appear that there might be an error in the calculations.

Not accurate; dynamic range plays a critical role in image formation, encoding, and “quality”.

#17

Dude, I made a free tool that is similar to pipeline tools I used when lighting for productions, you don’t like it, you don’t have to use it.

I didn’t mean to offend blender or the color profile you created. I was just explaining why I added that option to it. This is not an academic paper or an attack on you or your work. I’m sure that you are a better source of the actual dynamic range of the profile you created. If you say that Blender filmic has 16.5 EV range I believe you. I was just saying that I felt the effect was a bit too strong when lighting a scene with only about 5-6 stops before burning, so I added that option. It was probably for that particular scene. and was based on perception, sorry for my poor wording. I’m not, and was not attacking blender or your color profile.

Feel free to create a test scene and test the accuracy if you feel that is important. You have my blessing to alter my code as you see fit and publish your own tool.

The math is right, just like you’ll know your code I know mine. You are making baseless claims based on assumptions. Unless Blender “watts” units do not operate in a linear scale, the math is right.
And I make no claims of mimicking real-world light profiles. I just want to work faster when lighting a scene, and created this tool for that purpose. And it works great for that purpose.

I just wanted to give a bit back to the community. Thanks for making me feel bad about it.

3 Likes
#18

Believe me when I say I am not defending, nor attacking, anything. The crap I’ve done is broken in all sorts of ways!

I was merely pointing out that “feels like one stop” is quite different from what is happening, and I was quite curious why the statement was made initially. If your math is purely estimate, that’s fine. It just didn’t read as such, and is somewhat counter to the actual RGB ratios.

It is very easy to bog the math up because of the buffers that Blender presents. I believe @chafouin has a good deal of experience with how it is extremely challenging to do proper linear light calculations with the buffers Blender permits add on developers to interact with.

Anyways, please don’t take it as an attack. It wasn’t.

I end up (as in this case) having quite a few people who send me DMs based on random things found online, and I end up having to make a comment to clarify and help the folks who end up confused (as in this case).

Hope that clears it up.

1 Like
#19

its a great addon and thank you so much for sharing it for free, its very simple and practical <3

2 Likes