Light Painter add-on - don't place your light, paint it!

Coding Released Scripts and Themes
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Update: It’s now available on Github: github.com/semagnum/light-painter, with documentation here: semagnum.github.io/light-painter/

Users decide where light should and should not be cast via easy-to-use screen annotations, and lights are generated accordingly. Currently in alpha stage, but here are the currently planned features:

  • mesh lights as tubes and convex hulls
  • Add lamps facing desired areas (square and disk shapes for area lamps, ellipse and rectangle are WIP)
  • Customize direction to face surfaces directly or indirectly for rim lighting and consistent reflections
  • Carve out shadow cards (to block light in user-specified areas)
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Lamps are done! Therefore full support for Eevee:

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it reminds me a clever feature 3dsmax has.
I think that product visual designers will be really interested on this addon.

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How do I test

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Thank you for volunteering! I thought I’d be ready to start testing already, but I don’t think I’m there yet when it comes to features.

I apologize for that; I’ll update the title and remove the tester request to avoid further confusion.

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can you refer plz?

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It’s called Place Highlight

https://help.autodesk.com/view/3DSMAX/2022/ENU/?guid=GUID-C85C15B9-7739-414B-A2CC-30D42647BCB9

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ah yeah i see, ty, as i understand blender has same feature with ctrl drag
2023-03-21 14-25-09.mkv (2.2 MB), but this addon does cooler things )

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Nice, thanks for the link! In the back of my mind, I knew someone had to have done this. I have seen a similar add-on that just does the plot pointing like this.

I’m inherently doing the same thing with the reflected normal. Mine does an average over all the points drawn which can help if you want a larger surface to have the highlight, but just drawing a single dot would replicate this as well.

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Whaaat how did I not know that?! :exploding_head: Man, I need to learn my Blender gizmos. Thank you for sharing!

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ooohh… I didn’t know.
Nice to have that.

Thank you

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One final teaser until release - sky textures are supported!

I plan to put the add-on up in the next week or so, keep a lookout!

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Update (and not an April Fools’ joke): you can now find my add-on officially on github.com/semagnum/light-painter, with documentation here: semagnum.github.io/light-painter/

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Wow!! That looks amazing, Man!!
Will definitely test it today!!

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0.4.0 dropped - now you can paint flags to create shadows! See docs here.

Painting shadows with annotation

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With a few bug fixes, now at 0.4.6 - and a new trailer!

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Just released v0.6.1! Includes the following:

  • Several fixes, including for area lights and flags with square shapes
  • Ray visibility settings - change how the lamps affect different rays or render passes
  • A new pie menu for stroke placement
  • sky model parameter - choose between Nishita and Preetham sky models
  • light count parameter - now you can have each annotation stroke create its own lamp objects! See below as an example.

image
image1381×645 106 KB

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0.6.2 just dropped - the offset value now supports negative values. Mainly useful when the offset axis is one of the global axes.

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0.6.3 dropped! Now lamp objects have a relative power toggle. When enabled, lamps retain their apparent brightness on your surfaces, no matter how far away the light is!

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1.0.2 just dropped! Some big changes:

  • No need to use the annotation tool! All the Light Painter operators are now part of the toolshelf on the left side of the 3D view. Select the tool, left click to draw on the surfaces of your scene. Right click to erase. Press Enter to finish and add your light (or Escape to cancel).

tools

(The “Light Paint” tool includes point, spot, and area lamps)

  • With the new version, I added a couple improvements and optimizations for rim lighting.

New promo video as well:

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