Light Painter

Module: Design · Category: LevelDesign · Tool ID: LightPainter

Light Painter is an editor mode for placing lights by pointing at the surface they belong on. Choose a light type and its settings in the panel, then click in the viewport: the light lands on the surface under the cursor, offset along its normal. The same panel lays out lights in bulk (mirrored pairs, evenly spaced rows, lines, grids and spline paths) and edits them afterwards as a group.

Light Painter in a furnished room: the panel on the right and painted lights over the table.

Placing point, spot and rect lights, then a mirrored pair, a painted row, a line and a grid.

The same set before and after a Light Painter pass:

The set before any lights were painted.

The same set with warm and cool lights painted in.

When to use it

• Iterative lighting passes, where you place and move many lights quickly
• Practical and fill lights: lamps, sconces, strip lights and bounce fills
• Repeated fixtures such as corridor sconces, ceiling grids and path bollards
• Rough lighting on a whitebox before the art pass

What it isn’t for

• Key lighting for the whole level. Place and tune the sun, sky and hero key lights by hand.
• Baking. Light Painter places light actors; building lighting is still a separate step.

Opening the tool

1. Open the EQLabs Hub and search for Light Painter, or browse to Design → LevelDesign.
2. Click the tool card, then click Activate.
3. The Light Painter panel opens beside the viewport. The mode stays active until you click Deactivate or press Esc.

Placing a light

Choose Point, Spot or Rect under Light Type, then click a surface in the viewport. The brush preview shows the light’s radius before you commit.

A point light placed by clicking the floor, with its radius drawn around the cursor and the lit result in the inset.

A spot light placed on a cube, with its cone shaped by the Inner and Outer Angle fields.

A rect light with its width and height set in the panel and its facing aligned to the camera.

Setting	What it does
Intensity and Units	Brightness in Unitless, cd (candelas), lm (lumens) or EV
Radius	The light’s attenuation radius
Cast Shadows	Whether the placed light casts shadows
Inner Angle, Outer Angle	Spot lights only: the cone
Width, Height	Rect lights only: the emitting area
Light Color	A swatch, one of nine presets, or a temperature in kelvin with Use Temperature
Mobility	Static, Stationary or Movable
Normal Offset	How far (cm) the light sits off the surface, along its normal
Align	Which way the light faces: Surface, World Up, Camera or Custom pitch and yaw

Hold Shift while clicking to place a spot light regardless of the selected type.

Placement modes

Each mode below places several lights from one gesture. Line, Paint Drag and Grid are mutually exclusive; turn one on and the others switch off.

Mirror

Places a second light reflected across a world plane through the origin. Pick the Mirror Axis (X, Y or Z) to flip east–west, north–south or floor–ceiling. Useful for symmetric set lighting and paired sconces.

Mirror on: one click places a symmetric pair of point lights.

Paint Drag

Hold the left mouse button and sweep across surfaces. A new light drops every Spacing centimetres of cursor travel; release to finish the stroke.

A row of blue point lights painted in one stroke, evenly spaced along the floor.

Line

Click a start point and an end point. Line Count lights are placed along the segment, both ends included. Position and normal are interpolated between the two clicks, so Line works best on flat surfaces.

Line mode previewing a span, then placing five lights along it.

Grid

Click one corner and then the opposite corner. Rows × Cols lights are placed in the plane of the first surface you clicked; the panel shows the total before you commit. Use it for ceiling grids, wall panels and floor pads.

Grid mode previewing and placing a 2 × 3 array of purple point lights.

Spline Follow

Pick any actor with a spline component and set Samples. Generate Lights Along Spline places that many lights, evenly spaced by arc length so tight and loose curves get the same spacing. Align to Tangent points each light along the curve.

Seven lights placed along a curved spline path.

Press Esc during a line, grid or drag to cancel the pending placement without leaving the mode.

Shaping the light

IES Profile takes any TextureLightProfile asset. The gallery below it lists every IES profile in the project; click Refresh after importing new .ies files.

A photometric IES profile applied to a spot light, visible as the patterned pool on the curtain.

Advanced (Lumen / Volumetric) sets three per-light values:

Setting	What it does
Soft Source Radius	Softens shadows and highlights, as if the source were larger. 0 is a point source.
Indirect Intensity	Scales the light’s bounce contribution. 1.0 is physically correct.
Volumetric Scattering	Scales the light’s contribution to volumetric fog. 0 means no light shafts.

Advanced settings raising the bounce and scattering on a set of green fill lights.

Reusing settings

• Alt+click a light in the viewport to copy its settings into the panel.
• Alt+Shift+click a surface to take its material’s base color as the light color. This works for materials and material instances that expose a BaseColor parameter.
• Presets save every setting (color, temperature, IES and placement) under a name, as JSON in Saved/EQLabs/LightPainterPresets. Load and Delete work on the preset picked in the list.

Alt+click on an existing light copies its settings into the panel.

The eyedropper sampling a surface's material color for the next light.

Saving the current settings as a preset, then loading it back.

Editing what you placed

Batch Edit Placed Lights lists every light placed this session. Select some or all of them, then drag Intensity or Temp (K), or click Pick Color…; the change applies to the selection only. Each drag is a single undo step.

Batch Edit changing the intensity, color and temperature of five selected lights at once.

Every placement is one undo transaction, so Edit → Undo removes a whole line, grid, stroke or spline set in one step. Inside the mode, Undo Last (or Ctrl+Z in the viewport) removes only the most recent light, and Clear All removes every light placed this session.

Undo removing an entire grid placement in one step.

Undo Last clearing the session light by light.

Stationary lights

Unreal allows at most four overlapping Stationary lights in one area. Beyond that, the extras fall back to fully dynamic lighting and lose their baked shadows. With Mobility set to Stationary, turn on Show Stationary Overlap Heatmap to draw a sphere at every Stationary light in the level: green where the limit holds, red where four or more overlap.

The stationary overlap heatmap: green spheres where the limit holds, red markers where too many lights overlap.

Fourteen point lights placed by clicking the floor, with the overlap rings drawn in green and red.

Viewport controls

Input	Result
Click	Place a light (or the first point of a line or grid)
Shift+click	Place a spot light
Click and drag	Paint a row of lights (with Paint Drag on)
Alt+click a light	Copy its settings into the panel
Alt+Shift+click a surface	Take the surface’s base color
Ctrl+Z	Remove the most recent light
Esc	Cancel a pending line, grid or stroke; press again to leave the mode

Output

Light Painter creates ordinary APointLight, ASpotLight and ARectLight actors in the current level. They stay after you deactivate the mode, and nothing in the level depends on the plugin.

The finished pass: the painted lights in the viewport and the clean lit result in the inset.

Tips and gotchas

• Choose mobility before you paint. Static and Stationary lights take part in the lighting build; Movable lights don’t. Changing it later means editing every light.
• Watch the Stationary limit. Painting quickly makes it easy to put five Stationary lights in one room. Keep the heatmap on while you work.
• Use a small Normal Offset for floor lamps and a larger one for pendants. The offset is along the surface normal, so on a ceiling it moves the light down.
• The eyedropper needs a BaseColor parameter. Materials without one leave the color unchanged.
• Painted lights add to your dynamic lighting cost. Audit them with the Lighting Scenario Auditor.

Related tools

• Lighting Scenario Auditor — audit the lights you’ve placed
• Post-Process Volume Inspector — apply post-process presets to complement the lighting