Blender tutorial: How to create light layers in Blenders compositor

My new Blender tutorial is published. It’s longer than my regular videos.

The reason: this production is supported by the „Stipendienprogramm 2021 des Ministeriums für Kultur und Wissenschaft des Landes Nordrhein-Westfalen“ in Germany.

Topic

Today we talk about light layers.

In my example „light layers“ are actually rendered images of all light sources in a 3D scene. Every rendered image represents a single light object, a light group or a complete world lighting. The final rendered results will be used in Blenders compositor to control their light intensity and color.

All your lighting adjustments will be updated in about real time. And because every image is already in high quality, there is no need to rerender the whole scene when changing the light settings.

And the very best: you can do all this even for complete frame sets or animate the light values, if needed. This can be a real time saver!

Target group

This video is for compositing newbies, intermediate users and all who are interested in this technique. If you don’t like to watch the full video, you can use the links on YouTube to jump directly to the topic you’re interested in.

Please drop me a comment on YouTube, if you’ve any questions. I’ll try to answer as soon as possible.

Click below to watch the tutorial video

Professional version

Below a version for professional artists. I you don’t need detailed information and just want to see what is happening under the hood, this is the right one for you. This video is much shorter than the tutorial for beginners above.