Real Time Light Editor

This page is tempoary while we create a downloadable demo of our real-time light editor.

Editing lights in a 3D model can be a very time consuming process, especially if you are doing a professionally lit scene with key lights, spot lights, highlights and so on. Every time you make a change to a light, it requires a complete time-consuming render.

We decided it didn't have to be that way. So we implemented a real-time light editor. You can see the core of the light editor below:

This shows a scene with three lights, with three different colors and intensities. The key feature of our light library is that we don't render the entire scene, just the above light ball. This light ball functions as both a view into the final result, and lets you control the direction of the lights. That is, you can grab one of the above squares and move it around. As you move it around the ball, you're actually moving it around in the scene. As you move the light around the ball, we reshade and color the ball in real time.

So with a few clicks, you can perfectly position any light. If you want to adjust a light, just select a light and a slider below the ball lets you adjust the intensity and color of the light. Again, you can adjust it in real-time and see the results.

Its easy, and it works.

We have some technical documentation on the details here.