It paints on the light's gobo texture — the image that controls what a Spot or Area light projects. You're not painting on scene objects or meshes. The light itself is your canvas, so there are no limitations from object materials or emission shaders. Everything happens on the light.

No — those are two completely separate add-ons by different developers. The one on Blender Extensions is a light placement helper that puts lights where you click on a surface. This Light Painter does something fundamentally different: it masks and shapes the light itself, giving you full control over what areas get lit and which don't. Same name, very different tools.

You can paint from any angle — just use your mouse cursor in the viewport. There are two projection modes: Camera Space (what you see on screen maps 1:1 to the paint result) and Light Space (paint maps relative to the light's own projection, consistent regardless of viewing angle). Pick whichever fits your needs.

Yes — you place your Spot or Area lights in the scene as usual, then select a light and start painting inside its projection. There's no special setup, no node wiring, no material graph. Install the add-on, pick a light, add a layer, paint.

Pick any color and paint — you can do it all on one layer or spread colors across separate layers. Each layer has its own blend mode, so you control exactly how colors mix. Under the hood, each light gets its own stack of gobo textures that you paint on independently.

No — since you're painting the gobo texture, everything that Blender's Cycles engine can do with that texture still applies. Light size, shadow softness, intensity, and falloff all work normally. Light Painter just gives you a much faster, more visual way to create and edit the gobo itself.

Light Painter uses a layer stack built on top of Blender's light shader nodes, so the multi-layer setup itself won't transfer to another engine. The recommended workflow: merge your layers into a single image (Full version has Merge Visible), then export that texture and assign it as a light cookie in your engine. Both Unity ("Cookies") and Unreal ("Light Functions" / gobo textures) natively support this — just drop the exported image onto a light and you're set.

Yes — any number of lights. Each light can keep its own layer stack, so you can jump between lights, add or edit layers on each one, and paint each independently. There's no setup per light: select it, add a layer, start painting.

No. Light Painter doesn't use geometry nodes. You install the add-on, pick a light, and start painting.

Blender 3.6.x on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Cycles is the supported render engine, and the add-on works with Spot and Area lights.

Yes — one license covers personal and commercial use, including client work, studios, and freelance projects.

A one-time purchase gives you lifetime updates — every future update is free. You'll get access through your Blender Market account.

Painting runs in real time and is designed to stay responsive. Layer compositing is handled efficiently per-light, and you can work on complex scenes with multiple painted lights without significant overhead.