Light Groups (Collections) for 2.8
During the Blender Conference 2018 Developer AMA , Brecht mentioned there being no fundamental problem with adding light groups to 2.8, and that he was only reticent about adding the feature from a workflow/production perspective (Link here) . While I can see this holding true for more PBR-based workflows, when trying to accomplish more stylized renderings, they can be very important. Light groups were one of my favorite features of the Blender Internal engine, and for doing heavy PBR and stylized animations, like my studio does, they are quite handy.
My suggestion would be something like the image below. I could see this having huge potential, more so for Eevee than Cycles considering how you kind of need to "fake" some lighting circumstances regardless. Actually now that I am typing this, I see that Light Collections might be essential to Eevee's workflow, especially because Eevee is intended to replace the Blender Internal engine. For those whose workflow still relies on some BI abilities, this may be crucial to those who want to truly say goodbye to 2.79 (with the exception of Edge Pass, but that's another post).
I'm no developer or programmer so I apologize in advance if this seems far-fetched, and beyond the scope of this forum, but I do know I'm not the only one who would love to see this in Blender 2.8-ventually.
Just to be clear, this would make it so that a material could have the option of only being affected by a specified collection or group of lights.
**edit note: I do agree that they should be used as little as possible, as Brecht mentions in the clip above, but I'm in love with Eevee and since lighting takes some finesse as is, I think there would be ample circumstances where Light Collections/Groups would be valuable As Ton said, "I think it's a political feature." I would love to hear anyone's feedback if available.
*also excuse the hacky photoshop job with the mock-up below:
12 Comments
this would be very appreciated, really ! any update ?
* @lucaspedrajas * +1 Every other render has this. It's needed in Blender!
Yes please.. or just having the lights in the single collection affect the objects in that particular collection.
@ondraise15:
Yes, that could work as well. As long as they were exclusive to their place in the collection hierarchy, so that it would only affect the sub-collection if it was a member of the sub-collection.
For instance, say you have a collection titled "Character" and within the "Character" collection you had a "Clothing" collection. If the light was in "Clothing" it would only affect those objects and if it was in "Character" it would affect the rest of the "Character" objects as well as "Clothing" and all other collections within "Character."
I think this could work just as well, and maybe just have a tick box, perhaps on the light settings property panel, that said "Make light exclusive to collection" or something of that nature.
You mean light groups like the ones Luxrender has?
youtu.be/N2Sojs6ngA4
@zebus3d: Yes - pretty much acting like those in that video. They are also available in Blender's Internal Engine (pre 2.80) in the materials property panel.
Looks like there is some work being done on light groups since Thursday Oct 14th 2021!
developer.blender.org/D12871
Hi @all , is there any news on this topic? I couldn´t find any.
Anyone got updates on this?
So cool.
you should add a plus button to be able to have it affect several collections
@Luciano Muñoz: With this mock-up, I am trying to achieve what I believe to be the simplest possible integration of this feature. I think once we see it implemented and how it affects workflow, we can then decide if it we need to be able to have a material be affected by more than one light group.
For now, it'd be just as easy to create a new collection with just your lights for that material/character/object. Since lights can be part of multiple collections, this seems like a similar work around to having multiple light collections.