Lights

The Lights tab allows lights to be added to the scene and their properties to be set.

A light can have multiple Instances that share the same settings, with the exception of position and rotation. For example 6 identical downlights can be represented in Shapespark with 6 instances of the same Spot light, in which case adjusting the strength or color of the Spot light applies to all the instances at once.

Light types

Shapespark supports the following light types.

• Shapespark supports the following light types.

  • Ambient Light

  Enables fake ambient light that decreases realism but simplifies scene configuration, because light sources do not need to be added in all dark areas. Scenes with Ambient light can be baked with fewer samples. Use if baking speed or skipping the lighting setup are more important than realism. If enabled, the following settings can be configured:

  • Strength - The strength of the ambient light. The higher the strength, the less realistic the baked lighting becomes.Examples: 0.05 - gives slight illumination to unlit areas without a significant decrease in lighting realism 0.2 - gives sufficient illumination to dark areas at the cost of a significant decrease in lighting
  • Sky

  Enables the Sky, which is a key light source that allows all exterior or interior areas with windows to be nicely illuminated. If enabled, the following sky settings can be configured:

  • Strength Sky light strength.Examples: 0.8 - appropriate for most exterior scenes on a sunny day 6 - appropriate for most interior scenes on a sunny day
  • Color Sky light color.
  • Emissive materials - all emissive materials are available for edition in light settings tab
  • Spot light - The spotlight beam is restricted by a cone with an adjustable angle. Commonly used for downlights, lamps with lampshades, and sconces.
  • Point light - Emits rays uniformly in all directions. Commonly used for bulbs.
  • Area light - A rectangular light emitter. Commonly used for light panels.
  • Sun light - A distant light source that emits parallel rays into the direction specified by the light rotation.

Adding lights

• ➕ Spot, ➕ Point, ➕ Area buttons -Adds a light of the given type. An instance of the light is placed at the current camera position.
• ➕ Sun - Adds sunlight. An instance of the light is placed at the zenith point of the sky.
  
  

ℹ️ Lights can also be imported from a 3D modeling program. This method is usually more convenient than adding lights in the Shapespark editor, because it allows light sources to be attached to 3D objects, such as light fixtures.

❕ 3D model lights are imported as Shapespark Spot lights, but the type can be changed in the Shapespark editor after the import.

Light properties

Lights have the following properties:

• Strength The light strength
• Angle   For Spot lights only: the light beam angle
• IES profile For spot and point lights only: an optional light profile containing photometric data in IES format. Can be imported from a file with the 🖺 button
• Size or Width & Height The light size in meters. Larger lights cast softer shadows, smaller lights cast harder shadows. Depending on the lightmap resolution, excessively hard shadows can result in a pixelated lightmap
• Color The light color

Light instances

➕ button - Adds a new light instance.

The Position and Rotation of a light instance can be changed either with the numeric controls in the editor panel or with the gizmo in the 3D viewport.