Light Setups  

While snapshots save the state of individual layers, Light Setups save your entire lighting scene — all layers, all lights, all snapshots, everything. They are stored as JSON files on disk inside the addon's  setups folder and persist across Blender sessions and projects. Think of them as your personal lighting library that is always available, no matter which file you have open.

Saving a Setup

Click the Save Setup button in the Setups section to save your current lighting configuration. The addon automatically generates a name — Setup01, Setup02, and so on — and immediately begins capturing a thumbnail preview. If your scene has a camera, the thumbnail is rendered through Octane for an accurate representation of your lighting. If no camera is available, the addon falls back to an OpenGL viewport capture. A status message confirms the save while the thumbnail renders in the background.

You do not need to think about file names or locations. Everything is handled automatically and your new setup appears instantly in the Setups section at the top of the panel.

Browsing Your Library

The Setups section displays your saved setups with thumbnail previews. Use the arrow buttons to step through your collection one setup at a time without loading anything. This lets you browse and find the right setup before committing to it. Three thumbnail size buttons — S, M, and L — let you adjust the preview size to fit your panel width.

Loading a Setup

When you find the setup you want, click the Load button. The addon checks whether any collections from the setup already exist in your current scene. If there is no conflict, the setup loads immediately. If  collections with the same names already exist, a dialog appears with two options — Replace existing, which removes the old collections and their objects before loading, or Keep both, which loads the setup  alongside the existing collections. This prevents accidental data loss when loading setups into scenes that already have lighting.

Managing Your Setups

Each setup can be renamed, deleted, or have its thumbnail updated at any time. The Rename button lets you give your setup a descriptive name instead of the auto-generated one. The Update Thumbnail button  captures a fresh screenshot, which is useful when you have refined the lighting since the setup was originally saved. The Delete button removes the setup file and its thumbnail from disk after a confirmation  dialog.

Favorites

A heart toggle on each setup marks it as a favorite. The Show Favorites filter narrows the list to only your preferred setups. This is helpful when your library grows large and you  want quick access to the configurations you use most often.

Export and Import

Light Setups are your internal library that lives inside the addon. For sharing setups with others or moving them between machines, use the export and import workflow.

Export Setup saves your current lighting to the addon's export folder and opens the file browser there so you can move or rename the file. Quick Export re-exports to the last used file with a single click — no  dialog needed. Load Setup opens the file browser and lets you load a setup from any file on disk.

This separation keeps your internal library clean and organized while giving you full flexibility to share and transfer setups through files.