Environments and fill lighting

HDRi Environment#

Choose + Light → HDRi Environment or Studio menu → Import HDRi Environment. This adds a Full Canvas HDRi Environment as an editable image light at the bottom of the current stack. It fills 360° × 180°, uses Normal blend, and contributes to Render Preview by default. A 2:1 equirectangular source is recommended.

Select its row to adjust brightness, mapping, transform and image content in Light Properties. Reorder, disable or delete it like another layer. For a tracing reference, enable Exclude in Render Preview manually. Previously saved excluded layers keep that setting. See HDRi image layers.

Fill with a light#

Use + Light → Gradient, choose Flat canvas mapping and enable Fill entire HDR canvas. Its brightness, transparency and color ramps offer an editable fill. Use Flat Color for uniform lighting. These fills are ordinary layers, so their order, blends, Solo and visibility follow the stack.

A New Blank Lighting Setup starts with one editable Canvas gradient layer: white at the top, black at the bottom, at brightness 1. Disable or delete it for an unlit canvas. A normal new setup uses a Studio fill layer beneath its studio lights. Neither new setup needs separate Environment or Ambient panels.

Existing projects and rigs#

Older projects, saved looks and some imported rigs or conversions can contain a separate Environment or Ambient contribution. Their original values and rendering are preserved. When present, edit them in Scene Settings → Legacy lighting.

An existing Environment retains its Enabled, rotation, intensity and Remove controls. Existing Ambient retains its Enabled, fill color or gradient, and level controls. These contributions remain beneath the ordinary layers; Solo on light layers does not remove legacy lighting. New imports use HDRi Environment layers instead.

The Environment and Ambient sub-panels have been removed from Light Stack. Existing project lighting is not silently converted or discarded.

Exposure and resets#

Global Exposure multiplies the combined lighting and is baked into export. Reset All Scene Settings resets exposure and filters while preserving light layers and any legacy lighting. See Scene Settings and projects.

Color controls#

Base, Top and Bottom colors use the shared color picker, including numeric value modes and named saved colors. These lighting colors stay solid.