Nested Composites and HDR regions

Create a Composite#

Composite editing is available in Advance. Composites remain rendered and preserved in other modes.

A Composite evaluates its child lights into a local image. Its own mapping, brightness, opacity, Alpha Multiply and blend then place that image into the enclosing scene. Light Groups remain organizational sets; they do not produce images.

1. Choose Composite from + Light for an empty parent, or select neighboring unlocked layers and choose Merge into Composite.
2. For an appearance-preserving merge, select only Add layers or only Normal layers, all using the same blend. Blockers, Solo and Preserve destination alpha prevent this merge.
3. Click the parent's folder button or use Edit Composite children in its row menu.
4. Add and edit children. HDR Canvas now shows the local image. Render Preview continues to show the entire scene.
5. Use Scene or Up above the stack to leave local editing. Select the parent to move, rotate, scale, mask or blend the combined result.

Solo isolates siblings within the current Composite. Solo on a root Composite isolates that parent in the scene. The local canvas omits legacy scene Ambient, Environment, exposure and global Output Filters; the full preview includes them. HDRi Environment and fill layers follow the same parent/scope rules as other layers.

Nest, duplicate and undo#

A Composite can contain other Composites, up to eight levels deep. The project limit of 256 definitions includes parents and children. Copy, paste, duplicate, delete, save and Undo retain complete subtrees. A parent with a locked descendant is protected from deletion and disabled-light cleanup. Lock is per definition; entering a locked parent does not lock every child.

Lower Usage Modes preserve the graph but hide Composite authoring commands. Switch back to Advance to edit its children.

Release children#

Use Release Composite children on an unmodified parent. Release preserves appearance when the parent retains its original full-canvas transform, white color, brightness 1, opacity 1, no active mask/channels, mirrored appearance or crop, and Add or Normal blend matching its unlocked children. The app explains incompatible settings and leaves the project intact. Undo parent edits before releasing. Arbitrary transformed release and baking are not available in this version.

Blend regions from HDR images#

1. Create a Composite and add two HDRi File children.
2. Give each child Normal blending and full-canvas mapping as needed.
3. Use each child's Alpha Multiply source to reveal its chosen region. Images and procedural masks can use independent offsets, scales and rotations.
4. Return to Scene and place the Composite as one editable image.

Clone and move an original region#

Duplicate an HDRi File layer. In Source region, reduce Source width and height, then set Source x and y to choose the original pixels. Transform the duplicated layer to place the cropped content elsewhere. The source image remains embedded and unchanged; Use entire source resets the crop. Add Alpha Multiply for a softer or shaped boundary.

For bright-region separation, use the original HDR image as an Alpha Multiply image and set its black and white points around the intended luminance range. This retains masked original pixels; it does not reconstruct hidden background detail. Use the separate HDRi to Light Stack workflow when you want an approximate fitted rig.

Resolution and limits#

Composite images use the requested evaluation resolution scaled by the parent's dimensions. Preview and export have separate resolution-aware caches. Edits to descendants or their source images invalidate the cached result.

The intermediate-image budget is 128 MB. Nested or large Composites can reach it before the normal export-size limit. A failed export reports the budget limit; reduce resolution, parent size or nesting. Cached intermediate images use one sample per pixel; export supersampling also filters the placed parent image. Tiled Composite evaluation and local filter stacks are not included. Check tiny details at final output size.

The Scene/Up/Composite navigation strip is shown only in Advance. Basic and Professional use the root stack without that strip. Solo others operates only within the current sibling scope.