Placement Tools
Octane Light Studio offers six interactive placement tools that let you position your lights by clicking directly on surfaces in your viewport.
Instead of manually entering coordinates or dragging gizmos, you simply click where you want the light to go — the addon handles the math.
All placement tools are accessible through the Adjust panel on each light.
When any placement tool is active, a yellow border appears around the viewport to clearly indicate that a positioning tool is running.
The rest of the UI is dimmed to keep your focus on the active tool.
A Distance slider and a Size slider appear below the tool buttons, allowing you to fine-tune the light's distance from the target and its size without needing the full slider set.
The Size slider includes an Octane toggle to switch between Octane Size, which only affects shadow softness, and Physical Scale, which affects both brightness and shadow size.
Move and Aim
Click on any surface to reposition the light and aim it at that point. The light moves to a new position along the surface normal of your click point
while maintaining a consistent distance from the surface. This is the most commonly used placement tool and works well for quickly setting up
lights around your subject. The distance is locked during each drag to prevent the light from gradually drifting closer or further away during rapid mouse movement.
Aim Only
Click on any surface to rotate the light toward that point without moving it. The light stays exactly where it is and only changes its direction.
Use this when you have already placed a light in the right position and just want to redirect where it is pointing.
Lift and Aim
Click and drag to move the light up or down while it follows your mouse vertically. The horizontal position stays fixed — only the height changes.
The light continuously re-aims at the surface as you move. This tool uses plane projection instead of geometry raycasting,
which means it provides true vertical movement that follows the mouse one-to-one regardless of the surface geometry underneath.
It even works over empty space where there is no geometry at all.
Slide
Click and drag to move the light horizontally — left and right — while keeping its height fixed. Like Lift and Aim, this tool uses plane projection for precise one-to-one
movement along the camera's horizontal axis. The light maintains its current aim direction as you slide it.
This is useful for fine-tuning the horizontal position of a light without disturbing its height or aim.
Rim Light
Click on any surface to place the light behind the object as a backlight relative to the camera. The addon automatically calculates the position opposite to the camera
and places the light there, aimed back at the surface you clicked. This creates classic rim lighting — the bright edge of light that separates a subject from the background.
One click gives you a professional backlight setup.
Front Light
Click on any surface to place the light in front of the object on the camera side. This is the opposite of Rim Light — instead of placing the light behind the subject,
it positions the light between the camera and the subject, facing the clicked surface.
This is ideal for key lighting setups where you want the main light source coming from the viewer's direction.
Mirror Light
The Mirror button reflects a light to the opposite side of its target. It uses the auto-detected pivot point as the mirror axis, flipping the light's position while preserving its distance. After mirroring, the light automatically re-aims based on the active orbit mode. If Adjust sliders are active, the orbit state is updated so the sliders continue to work seamlessly after the
mirror. This is ideal for quickly creating symmetrical lighting setups — place one light, then mirror it to get a matching light on the other side.
Pick Target
The Pick Target operator aims the light at a target object without moving the light from its current position. After targeting, the addon switches to Pivot Point orbit mode so the Adjust
sliders orbit around the targeted object's pivot point. This is useful when you want to lock a light's orbit to a specific object without repositioning the light.