A new user interface and new preview renderer enhance this “click to render” system.

Lightmap is now shipping a major update to its “click to render” lighting software HDR Light Studio. Version 5 features an overhaul of the user interface, support for new 3D formats, and a new preview renderer. HDR Light Studio is designed for professional 3D artists working in advertising, design, animation and VFX.

HDR Light Studio works using a patented “click-to-light” system, which  Lightmap says “dramatically” reduces an artist’s lighting time. By placing lights directly into a render view, artists get instant updates on their progress, ensuring a faster, more fluid user experience.

Lightmap says Version 5 is re-engineered to handle larger images and 3D data, and has added support for Alembic, OpenImageIO and OpenColorIO, formats which are becoming more popular in VFX studios.

Key new features in HDR Light Studio 5:

Flexible UI: New full-screen user interface is customizable and includes dockable panels and preset layouts.

Instant re-lighting: New lighting preview renderer provides instant updates for lighting and diffuse/reflection changes; no special graphics card required.

Drag and drop: A wide range of light sources and effects can now be drag-and-dropped directly onto the render view.

Image import: User images can be loaded into HDR Light Studio, with support for LDR, HDR and alpha. For large images, the use of supported mip-mapped files increases lighting speed.

3D file formats: Support for Alembic, including moving cameras and time selection. FBX support (Windows only) is also available.

New lighting content: Procedural sun/sky, linear and radial gradients, secondary alpha control for lights, and additional blend modes like multiply and high pass have been added.

New content mappings: 3D, planar and spherical mappings can add content to an artist’s HDRI map for more creative control, e.g. tilting HDRI maps or maintaining verticals.