KaveLight: Build Sets, Keep Your Fingers

For those who don’t know the tool: KaveLight is a Mac application for planning sets, blocking, lighting and camera framing before a shoot. Previs without going up two floors, so to speak.

Warm desk. All fingers accounted for.

Build a set from your desk, somewhere warm, with all ten fingers still available for keyboard shortcuts. For those of us whose practical skills now consist largely of searching for the Undo command, that is an appealing arrangement. Put up a virtual wall, move a window and discuss the shot with the crew before anybody reaches for a power tool. Because “fix it in post” is so 2012.

That is the useful brief for quick previs: build enough of the scene to make the conversation concrete. The set does not need an award for production design. It needs to explain the idea while there is still time to change it.

KaveLight’s approach puts that discussion around a virtual set. Its tools include posed characters, an overhead layout view and a path-traced Camera Monitor. Camera bodies, recording formats and lenses determine framing; false colour and waveform support exposure planning. Manufacturer photometric data informs the fixture library.

Start with the room

You can build a space or import USDZ, FBX, OBJ, glTF and Collada. SketchUp enters through Collada export. For Polycam, KaveLight specifies Floor Plan USDZ: detected walls, floors, doors and windows remain individually editable. A raw scan mesh instead arrives as a single object.

For a quick setup, concentrate on the geometry that affects the shot. Establish the doorway, the window, the actor’s position and whatever obstructs the camera. Dress the rest when it answers an actual question. An exquisitely modelled coffee machine is a questionable priority if nobody has agreed which wall the camera faces. Never mind that, all work on video, no matter the topic, needs a coffee machine.

Give the crew something to discuss

The working session should connect camera intent to lighting decisions: compare the intended frame with the proposed setup, then ask the relevant department what it would take to achieve it. Treat the visualisation as a proposal that the crew can challenge.

For animatic preparation, the useful question is whether a planned composition communicates the story beat. Does the next angle reveal the information at the right moment? Is the important action readable? Agreeing on those questions gives the subsequent edit a clearer brief.

Our earlier Spark Story coverage explored rapid shot building and script-linked planning. KaveLight belongs in the same broader discussion about making decisions visible before the shoot, with its own documented emphasis on set, light and frame.

An assistant with an undo button

The Claude and ChatGPT connector operates on the project open in KaveLight. It can inspect the scene and camera image, meter a face, position and aim fixtures, adjust framing, and assemble rooms from scene elements. Each change creates an undo step; deleting objects and saving require approval.

The app must be running and signed in, with AI Assistants enabled. The connection addresses one Mac at a time. That makes the assistant another way to manipulate the scene while you direct the choices. It does not remove the need to check whether the result matches the brief.

A useful prompt should describe a measurable change: a room dimension, a camera position or a lighting adjustment. Review the result before asking for the next operation. “Make it cinematic” is still an impressively economical way of withholding the information somebody needs, and pissing of everybody involved who knows what they are doing.

Local rendering, connected assistance

Rendering runs on the Mac. The optional AI workflow sends requests and project information through KaveLight’s connector to the assistant provider. Its privacy policy names object positions, light settings, rendered camera images and project file locations among the information that can pass through. Provider retention and training settings apply. Local rendering therefore does not make a connected assistant session local-only.

Community sharing also publishes projects for other users to browse and download. Use the appropriate production-approved route when discussing confidential location material with the crew.

Budget for the licence, too

KaveLight requires an M1 or newer Apple-silicon Mac with macOS 15 or later. A 14-day trial needs no payment card. The regular licence prices are US$24.95 monthly, US$249 annually or US$819 perpetual, with applicable taxes added at checkout. Plans cover one person on up to two Macs and include updates. Subscriptions renew automatically; the perpetual licence also requires periodic online checks. The offline allowance is currently 14 days.

Export required frames and shot lists before a trial or subscription expires: project files remain on the Mac, but the application offers no read-only access without an active plan.

The rendering and photometric readouts are planning estimates, not a guarantee of the image or exposure on set. Bring the plan, then meter the actual setup. “We checked it before the shoot” has a certain appeal that “post will manage” never quite acquired.