HDR Light Studio 5 is out

New Full Screen Interface

• Presets - Drag and Drop from a Library of Lights
• Load your own LDR and HDR imagery as lights
• Instant re-lighting in the Render View
• Uber Light - One light type - so many possibilities

More info and downloads: https://www.lightmap.co.uk/hdrlightstudio/whats-new/

Flexible New User Interface

• New UI with panels that can be moved, scaled, docked/undocked and tabbed
• Preset layouts for different size displays
• Color and value ramps are now part of main UI, no longer pop ups

New Canvas Features

• Resizable canvas view
• Canvas can now display transparency via checkboard pattern
• Channel display drop down – Includes HSVA, HSV, Alpha
• Color LUT drop down – select display LUT for canvas
• Tool bar for canvas interaction mode
• Zoom in and out of the canvas
• Zoom into a cropped area on canvas
• Pan around the zoomed canvas view
• Fit canvas into the view
• Pixel Probe – Displays RGBA and HSV values under the cursor position on the canvas

New Presets Panel

• Presets replaces the old ‘Picture Lights’ concept
• Presets display is controlled using the drop down ‘tags’ filter
• Drag and drop preset thumbnails onto the render view, canvas or light list
• Double click a preset thumbnail to add the light to the canvas

New Light Controls Panel

• Click and drag buttons to scale, rotate and change light brightness

Render View (was LiveLight)

• Integrated into main HDR Light Studio app
• Faster render engine powered by Embree 2
• Intelligent renderer, no re-rendering needed to change: HDR lighting, view exposure, diffuse level, reflection level, shadow level or background image adjustments
• Pause/Resume button with progress bar
• Time(Sec) setting for Alembic files
• Tool bar for render view interaction mode
• Channel drop down – Includes HSVA, HSV, Alpha
• Color LUT drop down – select display LUT for render view
• Drop down camera selection
• Freecam mode – unlocks the camera and adds buttons for camera controls

3D file formats

• Load Alembic files
• Load FBX files (windows only)

Image Formats

• HDR Light Studio supports loading: BMP, Cineon, DDS, HDR, IFF, Jpeg, OpenEXR, PNG, PSD, Targa and Tiff

Render Settings

• Apply a LUT to the background image
• More background image formats now supported as above
• New fresnel controls for shader
• Max rendering samples setting
• Faster floor shadow rendering
• Displays loaded 3D model file path
• Simpler presentation of material settings, no longer tabbed

Light List

• New solo state – isolate lights display without affecting their on/off status
• New selectable state – make lights non-selectable via the canvas or render view
• New light lock state – lock lights so their properties can’t be changed
• Includes a light preview thumbnail in the list
• Right click on light list for context menu – duplicate, delete, deselect

Tool Bars

• New repositionable tool bars for adding lights, duplicate, delete, undo/redo, production rendering of HDRI maps
• New ‘re-render’ production HDRI button using last settings

Lighting Content

• New underlying architecture for light layer generation and compositing
• Faster multi thread final rendering of HDRI maps
• Light positioned with 100 x more precision
• Light sizes specified with 100 x more precision
• New sky background – procedural sky generator
• New Gradient Light Type – Linear or radial gradient
• Gradient background light now includes an alpha ramp
• Planar and spherical content mapping
• New blend modes: Multiply, High Pass (via low pass with invert), Hue
• Blend mode has ‘preserve alpha’ and ‘invert’ options
• Load images as lights
• Apply a LUT to a loaded image
• Flip image content horizontally
• Unpremultiply alpha on loaded image
• Invert the alpha channel of loaded image
• Saturation slider control for loaded image
• When coloring a loaded image using a gradient, this can be positioned anywhere with a radial or linear gradient
• New secondary alpha control on lights via Alpha multiply using gradient or image
• New Uber light type has all properties swappable providing all possible lighting settings from a single light type
• Lights can be now be renamed in the Light Properties panel
• New content type – flat color

Light Preview View

• Scaleable light preview
• Now includes transparency display via checkerboard pattern
• Channel drop down – Includes HSVA, HSV, Alpha
• Color LUT drop down – select display LUT for light preivew
• View exposure control

New HDRI Image Output Options

• Now uses EXR 2.0
• Choose 16bit half or full 32 bit
• Mip-map option
• Add a LUT to the rendered output

Menus

• Load 3D models into HDR Light Studio from Project menu
• Menu entries to control light list states
• Turn light orange selection handle display on an off
• In app software activation via activation codes
• Production rendering of HDRI maps from menu
• Enhanced project assets management window

New Application Preferences Panel

• Change proxy image resolution used in Render View and shared with 3D apps
• Apps image cache size
• Select OpenColorIO preferences
• Change directory locations for presets, proxy image and licenses