Snapshots                                         

Snapshots capture the complete state of every light in a layer — positions, intensities, colors, gradients, visibility settings, emission type, temperature, and all light-type-specific properties. Think of them as save states for your lighting. You can create multiple snapshots per layer, switch between them instantly, and always return to a previous look with a single click.

Creating a Snapshot

 To save your current lighting state, click the plus button in the snapshot row above your layer. A new snapshot is created that stores every property of every light in that layer at that exact moment. You can create ten snapshots - one for each lighting variation you want to keep.

Switching Between Snapshots

Click any snapshot button to load it. The addon restores all light properties to the state that was saved in that snapshot. This happens instantly, so you can rapidly compare different lighting looks by clicking through your snapshots. This is especially useful during creative exploration when you want to evaluate multiple options side by side.

Realtime Snapshots vs Manual Save

The Realtime Snapshots toggle in the Settings section controls how snapshots handle your changes. This is an important workflow decision and it is worth understanding both modes.

With Realtime Snapshots turned on, every change you make to any light is immediately written to the active snapshot. Moving a slider, changing a color, repositioning a light — everything is saved automatically. 

When you switch to a different snapshot, your current state is saved first before the new snapshot loads. This mode is ideal for fast iteration where you want every adjustment preserved without thinking about it.

With Realtime Snapshots turned off, which is the default, your changes are temporary. The active snapshot retains its original state no matter what you do. You can freely experiment — adjust lights, try different colors, move things around — knowing that the saved snapshot remains untouched. When you find a look you want to keep, click the Update button to explicitly commit your changes to the active snapshot. 

If you want to discard your experiments and go back, simply click the snapshot again to reload its saved state.

The manual mode is the default because it protects you from accidental overwrites. It is particularly valuable in production environments where you have carefully crafted lighting setups that should not change unless you deliberately decide to update them.

Snapshots and Layers

Each layer has its own independent set of snapshots. This means you can have different snapshot variations for your key lights while keeping your fill lights on a fixed snapshot, or vice versa. The snapshot row  stays visible above the layer even when the layer is collapsed, so you can switch lighting states without expanding the layer to see the individual lights.

What Gets Saved

Snapshots are comprehensive. They store the position, rotation, intensity, color, emission type, temperature, all visibility flags, sampling rate, gradient settings, pivot mode, and every light-type-specific property — area light shape and size, spotlight cone angle and throw distance, directional light spread angle, sphere light radius, mesh light object reference, and analytic light geometry type with all its parameters. When you load a snapshot, you get back the exact lighting state that existed when it was created.