Archive notice: This article was originally published on March 4, 2016. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
The Area Lights feature allows an HDRI map and a set of area lights to be created and controlled interactively at the same time.
Maya Connection
Maya is the first tool to benefit from the new function through Maya Connection, with support for all renderers: Mental Ray, V-Ray, Maxwell, Arnold, Redshift, Renderman and Iray for Maya. When HDR Light Studio is used through Maya Connection, the area lights can be created on the fly in the Autodesk tool and the correct shader network for the respective renderer is built immediately. The area lights always remain synchronised with HDR Light Studio. Through a Maya IPR session, users can view a live preview of the lighting effects from their work in HDR Light Studio. The lighting design can also be moved between the different tool packages independently of the 3D software or render engine.
An update to the 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Modo and Nuke/Octane Connections to support the feature is planned soon.
Further Features
With HDR Light Studio 5.3, existing lights can now also be converted into Uber Lights, the Render View updates continuously when lights are moved, and an optimised licence-management dialogue provides users with comprehensive information about the currently installed licence. In addition, the lighting tool now supports Iray for Maya, Solidworks Visualize and Modo 902, and numerous improvements and bug fixes have been made.
Lightmap CEO Mark Segasby describes the 5.3 release as the biggest update ever made to the lighting software.
Price and Availability
HDR Light Studio customers can simply download the update at www.lightmap.co.uk. HDR Light Studio 5.3 is compatible with Windows, Mac OS X and Linux and costs 945 euros as a perpetual licence or 395 euros on an annual subscription.
