K-Tools: Scene Light Manager - Feature Guide

Welcome to the Scene Light Manager (SLM)! This addon is a complete toolkit designed to streamline your entire lighting workflow, from initial organization to final render-pass setup. It provides a "Set-Based" or "Group-Based" workflow that makes managing complex scenes simple and visual.

Repot a Bug on Github or Send me an E-mail (kezives3d@gmail.com)

Consider supporting if the add-on is useful for you :)

🚀 Core Workflow: The 5 Management Tabs

Your workflow is organized into five distinct modes:

• Collections: Your main workspace. This is where you organize your lights and assets into logical groups (like "Key_Lights", "Fill_Lights", "Assets_Bouncers"). It manages scene hierarchy and properties.
• Light Groups (LG): Control your render passes. This tab is a powerful UI for Blender's native Light Group system. You can create groups, assign custom icons, and add/remove lights and mesh emitters to control your passes in the compositor.
• Light Linking (LL): Take control of which objects receive light. This tab manages Blender's Light Linking (receiver_collection). You can create "Sets" (e.g., "Characters_Only") and define which lights should only affect the objects in that set.
• Shadow Linking (SL): Control which objects cast shadows. This tab manages Blender's Shadow Linking (blocker_collection). You can define "Sets" of objects (e.g., "Windows_Blockers") and assign lights to use them as shadow blockers.
• Quick Actions: Your speed-dial. This tab provides a central hub to access all "Quick Assign" menus (for Collections, LG, LL, and SL), allowing you to manage any selected object without leaving the tab.

✨ Key Features & Systems

1. Collection Management

• Smart Organization: Create (+) and Delete (-) addon-managed collections (e.g., LIGHTS.001). Warning: This deletes the collection and its contents.
• Pin User Collections: Pin (📌) any existing collection from your scene (e.g., "My_Imported_Assets") to the SLM interface. Removing a pinned collection (-) only removes it from the UI, it does not delete your original collection.
• Dynamic UI:
  • Live Count: Instantly see the number of SLM-managed items (n) inside each collection.
  • Outliner Sync: The list item icon automatically syncs with the collection's Outliner Color Tag.
  • Sorting: Move Up (🔼) and Move Down (🔽) operators to re-order your lists.
• Discovery: An optional setting in the Preferences (Discover Collections on Refresh) allows the Refresh button to scan your entire scene for collections matching search terms (e.g., "luz", "licht"), not just the ones inside your main "LIGHTS" collection.

2. Light & Asset Management (In-Depth)

• Unified List: View all your lights, mesh lights, targets, bouncers, and blockers in a single hierarchical list.
• Targeting System:
  • Group Target: Assign one "Target" (Empty) to an entire collection. All lights set to "Auto" mode will automatically follow it.
  • Individual Target: Create a dedicated target for any single light, which overrides the Group Target.
  • Auto-Hierarchy: The UI automatically indents lights to show you exactly what is tracking what (Group Target > Light, Individual Target > Light).
• Asset Spawning:
  • A single Add (+) menu allows you to add standard lights (Point, Sun, etc.) or pre-built assets.
  • Add Bouncer/Blocker: Spawns a Plane with the correct material and a pre-assigned "Individual Target" for easy aiming.
  • Add Mesh Light: Spawns a "Softbox" plane with a pre-built emissive material and a pre-assigned target.
• Auto-Tagging (Smart Meshes): When you assign any MESH (like a custom plane) to a Light Group or Light Link, the addon will:
  1. Automatically add the mesh_light tag to its name (so the Isolate system can see it).
  2. Automatically move it to the "Mesh_Lights" collection (if it's currently "stray" in the root of the scene).

3. The "Isolate" (Solo) System

• One-Click Solo: A dedicated Isolate button (using your custom STICKY_UVS icons) is available on every major list item:
  • Collections (List 1)
  • Light Groups (List 1)
  • Light Link Sets (List 1)
  • Shadow Link Sets (List 1)
  • Individual Lights/Objects (Lists 2 & 3)
• Context-Aware: It "solos" exactly what you clicked on: a single object, or all lights and objects belonging to a Set.
• Mute World: An optional setting (Isolate Mutes World) automatically disconnects your World/HDRI shader for a true "black box" lighting environment.

4. Custom Icon "Tag" System

• Visual Workflow: Assign unique, color-coded icons for every Light Group (LG), Light Link (LL), and Shadow Link (SL) set you create.
• Custom Icon Sets: Uses three distinct icon shapes Circles for Light Groups, Diamonds for Light Linking and Rounded Square for Shadow Linking. you can also hange the Collection Tag Color directly from UI.
• Global Info: The main "Collections" light list automatically checks all other systems and displays the tags for that light, giving you an at-a-glance summary:
  • Light Name [LG Icon] [LL Icon] [SL Icon]

5. Universal "Quick Popup" (The Hotkey)

This is the central hub for your entire workflow, designed to be assigned to a hotkey (like Q).

• Hotkey Manager: The addon hotkey can be set/changed directly from the Preferences panel.
• Context-Aware UI: The popup is "smart" and changes based on your selection:
  • 1 Emitter Selected: Shows basic controls (Energy, Color) and the "Assign" menus.
  • 2+ Emitters Selected: Hides basic controls but keeps "Batch" and "Assign" menus.
  • 1 Receiver Selected (non-emitter mesh): Hides emitter controls and only shows the "Receiver" (Affected Object) menus.
• Popup Features:
  • Batch Controls:
    • Energy (Add): A [+] / [-] style operator to add or subtract energy from all selected items. Includes a safety check to prevent values from going to zero.
    • Exposure (Set): A slider to override (set) the exposure value for all selected lights in real-time.
  • Quick Target/Parent:
    • An eyedropper to assign a Track To target (with Keep Transform) to all selected items.
    • An eyedropper to assign a Parent (with Keep Transform) to all selected items.
    • These fields auto-populate with the active object's current target/parent, and clearing them (X) removes the constraint/parent.
  • All Quick Assign Menus:
    • Collections: "Move to Collection..."
    • Light Group (LG): "Assign to Group..." (for Emitters)
    • Light Linking (LL): "Assign to Set..." (for Emitters) AND "Quick Assign Object..." (for Receivers)
    • Shadow Linking (SL): "Assign to Set..." (for Emitters) AND "Quick Assign Object..." (for Receivers)

6. Linking Menus & Operators

• Full "Set-Based" Control: All LL and SL operators are "Set-centric", allowing you to manage groups of lights/objects instead of one light at a time.
• Dynamic Menus: All "Quick Assign" menus are dynamic, showing your custom icons and displaying the current set/group of the active object.
• Smart Creation: All "Quick Assign" menus include "New Group from Selected" operators to create a new Set and assign the selected items in one click.
• Native UI Integration (List 3): The "Receiver/Blocker" object lists use Blender's native template_light_linking_collection, which supports drag-and-drop from the Outliner and native Include/Exclude toggles, giving you the best of both worlds.
• Custom Asset Scanner: A tool in the Preferences to scan your Asset Browser libraries for custom node groups, allowing you to override the addon's default "Softbox" asset.

K-Tools: Scene Light Manager - Add-on Preferences

This guide explains the settings available in the SLM Add-on Preferences (Edit > Preferences > Add-ons > Scene Light Manager).

Naming and Search

This section controls how the addon finds and names your core lighting collections.

• Main Collection Name:
  • This is the name of the "Master" collection (e.g., "LIGHTS") that the addon uses as its root.
  • The Refresh button in the "Collections" tab will automatically find this collection and list all of its children.
• Discover Collections on Refresh:
  • OFF (Default): The addon only lists collections that are children of your "Main Collection" or collections you "Pin" manually. This is fast.
  • ON (Slower): When checked, the Refresh button will also scan your entire scene (bpy.data.collections) for any collection that matches the terms below.
• Collection Terms:
  • (Only appears if "Discover Collections" is ON).
  • A comma-separated list of names (e.g., "light,lights,luz,lumiere,licht,조명,ライト,灯光") to help the addon "discover" other light collections in your scene.
• Enable Mesh Light Listing:
  • Tells the addon to treat MESH objects as potential lights. This is ON by default and uses name-based detection, which is very fast.
• Mesh Light Terms:
  • (Only appears if "Enable Mesh Light Listing" is ON).
  • A comma-separated list of tags (e.g., "mesh_light,emissive,meshlight") that the addon uses to identify a mesh as a light in the Collections and other modes.
  • Tip: When you add a plain mesh to a Light Group or Light Link set, the addon will automatically rename it (e.g., MyPlane -> MyPlane_mesh_light) using the first term from this list.

Performance

This section controls how "live" the addon feels.

• Enable Auto-Refresh:
  • ON (Default): The addon automatically monitors your scene. When you add, delete, or move a relevant object, the UI lists will update automatically.
  • OFF: The UI will not update unless you manually press the Refresh button in a panel.
• Sync List to 3D View:
  • ON (Default): Clicking an item in an SLM list (e.g., a light in the "Collections" tab) will also select and activate it in the 3D Viewport.
  • OFF: Clicking in the list only updates the UI, it does not change your 3D View selection.

Light List Display

This section controls what information is shown in the various "Light Lists" (in the Collections, LG, LL, and SL tabs).

• Show Hide Select: Toggles the "Selectable" (mouse cursor) icon in the lists.
• Show Hide Viewport: Toggles the "Viewport Visibility" (monitor) icon in the lists.
• Show Hide Render: Toggles the "Render Visibility" (camera) icon in the lists.

Keyboard Shortcuts

This section allows you to manage the hotkey for the SLM Quick Popup Menu.

• The addon attempts to register Y as the default hotkey in the 3D View.
• You can use this panel to change the key (e.g., to Shift+Alt+L) or remove it entirely.
• If the shortcut is removed, a button "Add Shortcut" will appear to let you restore it.

Custom Softbox Node Group

This section allows you to override the addon's default assets (like the SLM-SOFT_BOX node group used by the "Assign Softbox" operator) with your own custom assets from your Asset Browser.

• Use Custom Softbox:
  • OFF (Default): The addon will import its built-in SLM-SOFT_BOX from its own asset file.
  • ON: The addon will ignore its built-in asset and will instead try to load the asset you specify in the fields below.
• Current Custom Node:
  • File Path: The absolute path to your .blend file (e.g., C:\MyAssets\Blender\NodeGroups.blend).
  • Node Group Name: The exact name of the node group inside that .blend file (e.g., "My_Awesome_Softbox").
• Asset Library Finder:
  • This is a helper tool to find and fill in the fields above automatically.
  • Scan Asset Libraries: Click this to make the addon scan all of your registered Asset Browser libraries. It may freeze Blender's UI while scanning depending how big is your Assets repository.
  • Search: A filter to search the results of the scan.
  • Temp List: A list showing all the Node Groups found in your libraries. Use the 'Filtering options' to find your Node Group asset faster (Bottom Left arrow icon).
  • Set as Custom Softbox: Click an item in the list, then click this button to "capture" its File Path and Name into the "Current Custom Node" fields.