Extra Lights - Photometric Lighting Addon

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    ( 2 )
  • Files: 2
    • - extra_lights_v1-2.zip
      8.45 MB
    • - extra-lights-assets_only.blend
      17.8 MB

Introducing physically based, photometric lighting for Cycles and Eevee


This plugin for Blender adds over 60 photometric light presets to your Add menu. Here's what you can expect:

  • All lights are based on real world sources and are organized by type and strength.
  • There are over 30 plain point, spot, area, and sun presets in total. 
  • There are also over 30 IES presets that cast believable patterns according to how each bulb is actually used.

  • Each light's strength can be adjusted in lumens instead of watts.
  • Each light has a preset Kelvin color temperature based on its real world source, which can be easily adjusted.
  • You can set an RGB color instead of a Kelvin value if desired. The number of lumens will be the same regardless of the color selected, so a blue light and a red light will appear equally bright. 

Adjusting a normal Blender light with constant watts makes some colors appear darker than others:

Adjusting a photometric light with constant lumens keeps the perceptual brightness the same (explanation below):

  • A lumens conversion node group is appended if Use Nodes is enabled, which can be used for any type of light in Cycles including mesh lights. 
  • You can set the scene's exposure to match the newly added preset with one click. 
  • Spot lights produce the same amount of light regardless of their spot angle, so tightening the beam will actually focus the light, unlike Blender's default. 

  • Sun presets can be created with a corresponding sky that's automatically linked to the sun's rotation. They're also automatically placed above the height of the camera for convenience.

  • All lights can be used in Eevee but are more convenient to use in Cycles. Because Eevee can't use nodes yet, the lumens, color temperature, & spot angle values can only be adjusted upon creation and IES textures will not be applied.

Documentation can be found here: https://blendermarket.com/products/extra-lights/docs 

Add-ons

Author

Jonathan Lampel
2 Reviews
  • Blake Howard(eskbeemo) ·

    I'm glad more people like myself can benefit from your research. You could say this add-on is a guiding light for selecting the ideal power to illuminate the scene

  • Michal Dziewiatkowski(dzcannon) ·

    Just wanted to say thank you for your hard work Jonathan, these lights have been a huge game changer for me when lighting my interior renders, sometimes messing around with lighting just doesn't look as good as these!

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