Today, Lightmap announced the immediate availability of HDR Light Studio version 5.3. This new release adds ‘Area Lights’ to its feature set, allowing users to interactively create and control both a HDRI Map and a set of Area Lights, with the same ‘artist friendly’ ease of use that has made HDR Light Studio a favourite lighting tool with professional 3D artists world-wide.

The Autodesk Maya Connection is the first to take advantage of the new Area Lights feature, supporting all leading renderers: Mental Ray, V-Ray, Maxwell, Arnold, Octane, Redshift, RenderMan and iRay for Maya.

"We are very excited about the HDR Light Studio 5.3 release. The ability to control both the environment map and Area Lights using one unified lighting workflow is a totally unique approach and a significant evolution of our software. In fact, it’s the biggest update we have ever made” says Mark Segasby, Lightmap CEO. “Our customers love how fast they can block out and adjust lighting, using HDR Light Studio’s interactive HDRI map, and also how fast this renders. By adding the ability to promote a light from the HDRI map into 3D, users can utilise all of HDR Light Studio’s controls and content to light specific details in their shots."