Light Properties and content types

Select a light first#

Click a Light Stack row or numbered HDR Canvas handle. The panel shows its name, lock, Enabled state, Content, Mapping and appearance controls. Unlock a light before editing it. With two or more lights selected, this same panel becomes Mass Actions, with exposure, position, visibility, protection and linked-light controls. Select one row or canvas handle to return to single-light editing. See Mass Actions.

Choose the editing target#

The title identifies Mass Actions for [count] Lights or Mass Actions for [group name]. Group selection activates group controls while retaining the previous layer selection in a dimmed state. With no active selection, the panel explains the three choices: one light, multiple lights, or one Light Group. See Light Groups.

Choose a content type#

Set placement and appearance#

Position uses longitude and latitude around the environment. Width, height and rotation shape its footprint. Spherical light mapping behaves like a source projected onto the environment; flat canvas mapping places content directly in the panorama. Use flat mapping for a full-panorama HDRi Environment or fill layer.

Brightness and color set the contribution. Edge Softness controls the boundary. HDRi File has an additional Gaussian Blur control below Edge Softness. Alpha Mask supplies a polygon or box mask independently of the source content.

Blend choices are Add, Lighten, Normal, Multiply, Darken, Subtract, Difference, Low Pass, Amplify, Color, Hue and Saturation. Their result depends on the layers beneath them. Start with Add for an emitting light and inspect HDR Canvas when changing blends.

Preview exclusion#

Exclude in Render Preview is off on a normal new light. Turn it on for a reference that should remain on HDR Canvas but not light the model. Export uses its own Ignore Excluded Lights choice. See HDRi image layers.

More detailed workflows: Curve Editor, Diffusion Panel and linked lights.

Independent channels and Composites#

Professional and Advance add Value Blend and Alpha Multiply. Advance also adds Composites and original HDR regions. These preserve the existing Main content controls.

Fill the canvas and restore the transform#

With Flat canvas mapping, Fill entire HDR canvas is a switch. Turn it on to center the light at 360° × 180°, with zero rotation and Edge Softness. Turn it off to restore the position, size, rotation and softness saved when you enabled it. Undo and Redo still work.

For an already full-canvas light without a saved prior transform, switching off uses a 48° × 40° footprint at longitude 0°, latitude 20°, zero rotation and softness 0.3. The saved transform travels with the project. Manually changing those transform values updates the switch to reflect the actual footprint; changing Mapping clears the saved full-canvas restore point. Content ramps and masks can still leave areas unlit even when the footprint fills the canvas.

Solo others beside Solo isolates the other enabled lights in the current stack. Use the active isolation choice again to restore all enabled lights. It does not change Enabled or Lock.

Turning off a light’s Solo switch removes that light from the current isolation set, including when it is hidden or one of several soloed lights. Use Clear Solo in the layer menu to clear the whole stack.

Color controls#

Color opens the shared color picker, with Hex/RGB/HSL/HSB modes, compact sliders, numeric values and named saved colors. Color ramp stops use the same picker. Light colors stay solid; light brightness and layer opacity remain separate controls.

Below the existing Warm, Daylight and Cool swatches, Color temperature provides a continuous warm-to-cool selector from 1,000 K to 15,000 K, in 25 K steps. Drag its round thumb on the centered color track, or focus it and use the arrow keys. It changes the light's color; intensity remains independent. The ramp uses the same approximate temperature-to-RGB mapping as the existing swatches. A custom color stays unchanged until you move the selector; its nearest temperature is marked Custom tint · ≈. This is an RGB lighting control, not a spectral calibration tool.