Interface Overview

Octane Light Studio lives in the 3D Viewport sidebar under the OLS2.1 tab. Press N to open the sidebar if it is not visible. The entire addon is organized into four collapsible sections, each with a clear purpose. 

This page walks you through what you see in each section from top to bottom.


Setups

The Setups section sits at the very top of the panel. This is your personal library of saved lighting configurations, and it contains all setup-related file operations in one place. Each setup is displayed with a thumbnail preview that is automatically captured from an Octane render when you save it. Use the arrow buttons to browse through your setups without loading them. When you find the one you want, click the Load button to apply it to your scene. You can also rename, delete, or update the thumbnail of any setup. A heart toggle lets you mark setups as favorites, and the Show Favorites filter narrows the list to only your preferred configurations. Three size buttons — S, M, and L — let you adjust the thumbnail size to fit your panel width.


The section also contains the file operation buttons: Save Setup stores your current lighting to the internal library, Export Setup saves to a file on disk, Quick Export re-saves to the last used file with one click, and Load Setup imports from a file.


Create Lights

The Create Lights section provides everything you need to add a new light to your scene in a single row. From left to right: the Create button, a light type dropdown to choose from the available Octane light types (Area, Spot, Directional, Sphere, Mesh, Analytic), T and B emission toggle buttons to select between Texture Emission and BlackBody Emission, and a layer dropdown to choose which layer the light will be added to. Click Create and the light appears in the selected layer with the Adjust panel opening automatically.


Layers

The Layers section is where you spend most of your time. It contains all your light layers with their individual lights and is the central hub for controlling your entire lighting setup.


Below the section header, two toggle buttons let you customize which additional rows appear on each light:


Layer Structure

Each layer has a header row with a power toggle to enable or disable the entire layer, the layer name with a collapse/expand arrow, an intensity field that acts as a master dimmer for all lights in the layer, and a context menu button for rename, duplicate, and delete.

Disabling a layer grays out everything inside it — only the power button remains clickable.

Snapshots are displayed above each layer and stay visible even when the layer is collapsed. This lets you switch between saved lighting states without expanding the layer to see individual lights.

Inside an expanded layer, each light uses a compact layout.


Each light row contains:


The Adjust Panel

Clicking the Adjust button on a light reveals the full set of positioning tools inside the panel:


Beam-Aligned Light Labels

Light names are displayed directly on the light beam for every light in the scene. Each label is positioned along the beam direction, matching the orientation of the beam. Non-active lights also display their intensity value above the beam (e.g., "Intensity: 20"), giving you an instant overview of your entire lighting setup. Clicking on empty space in the viewport deselects all lights and shows all labels at once for a complete scene overview.


Settings

The Settings section at the bottom provides global controls for your workflow. Here you will find Max Samples and Max Preview to control render quality, Clay Mode for evaluating lighting without material distractions, display toggles for gizmo colors, render visibility, and viewport visibility, and the Realtime Snapshots option that controls whether changes are automatically saved to the active snapshot.


Five Viewport Overlay toggles — Light Names, Geometry Name, Intensity, Tilt, and Geometry Highlight — let you individually control which visual information is displayed in the 3D viewport. A link to the online documentation is provided at the bottom of the section.