What It Can Do For You

HDR Light Studio uses image based lighting technology - but wraps it up into an easy to use, powerful real-time lighting experience. Artists make choices with their eyes and HDR Light Studio enables artists to interactively light CG objects in record time and to higher quality than possible before. HDR Light Studio has already become an indispensable lighting tool for 3D artists world-wide.

1. Professional Studio Lighting

Design HDRI lighting maps from scratch using powerful Synthetic and Picture based light sources. Place lights onto the HDR canvas, and their shape is distorted in real-time, so they look correct when mapped onto a lighting sphere/dome. This unique solution means that 'image based lighting' is now faster to create and just as interactive as traditional CG light sources. Plus image based lighting has many advantages - fast render times and the added realism you get from the light energy and the intensity of reflections being perfectly in sync.

Professional Studio Lighting

2. Professional Studio Lighting - On Location

Load existing HDR environments and add additional light sources and effects on top. Don't be restricted by the lighting found within your existing HDR captures. Custom studio lighting placed into existing location HDRs can bring out the best in your subject matter. If a photographer were to shoot on location, additional lighting and bounce cards would always be used. But their position always depends on the shape and materials of the subject matter. HDR Light Studio provides the best of both worlds - real world location with additional studio lighting.

On Location

3. Make your own HDRI maps to match back-plate images

Create a HDR environment to match an existing photographic background. Pick colors from the background image using the new color matching tools in HDR Light Studio 3.0 and build your own HDRIs with accurate coloring - so objects looks properly bedded in to the background image. With instant feedback on your changes - you can quickly craft a suitable lighting environment.

HDRI maps to match back-plate images

4. Creative location re-lighting

Gain interactive and creative control over lighting from shot locations

Dynamically enhance an existing HDRI lighting map - seeing the results on your 3D model in real-time. Change exposure and color using the new synthetic light blending modes. It's amazing to be able to shape the light in an artistic manner - but taking advantage of all the detail held within the original HDR map. All changes are editable, nondestructive and can be rendered as a final lighting image at any time.

Creative location re-lighting

5. Increasing the dynamic range of LDR environment maps

Sometimes the HDR you have been provided with does not contain a large dynamic range. Or maybe you only have access to a low dynamic range environment. As long as your image is saved as a HDR or EXR file, whatever its dynamic range - you can then load it into HDR Light Studio and dodge and burn the exposure of the image using the new blending modes - thereby stretching the dynamic range. Create a useful lighting environment even out of content that usually would not be suitable for lighting.

Increasing the dynamic range of LDR environment maps