MagicaCSG Feature: Area Lighting
Added 2025-05-26 00:15:28 +0000 UTCI spent some time on prototyping area lighting in MagicaCSG this weekend (though I need to finish bug fixes for the last beta version, which will be released by the end of this month).
This new feature allows you to add and transform multiple rectangle light sources in the scene (similar to the background images).
You can use area lighting to cast nice hard or soft shadows (depending on the size):
The luminance depends on the angle and distance between the surface and light sources. It works with all types of built-in materials, but adds extra cost for rendering, which may be expensive for complex scenes.
Of course, we can have more types and properties for light sources, but let's add the preliminary support first.
Comments
Very excited for this feature. It feels like the return of the 'sun' feature from the original versions, but with far more useful implementation. Will we eventually be able to get luminance on emissive materials? Example being the emissive headlights of the cars. As a follow up, is there plans to add light 'bloom' to emissive materials in rendering?
Immortal Turk
2025-06-05 16:54:50 +0000 UTCI’ll think about how to achieve this in a general way.
ephtracy
2025-05-28 18:03:53 +0000 UTCLights are really great update! I have a tiny feature request that would make a big quality of life update for magica. If you could map hotkeys for H,S,V color settings and press button and just drag mouse to change hue, saturation or value. Then you could just keep focus on viewport and adjust color values as you go.
Mikko Sinisalo
2025-05-28 09:29:52 +0000 UTC
