LW2026 with Octane - How to apply an image to a light for softbox effect
Posted: Mon Oct 19, 2026 11:14 am
Hi
I've just downloaded the new LW26 and opened one of my existing LW24 scene's and it looks like the way that images are added to lights has been overhauled in a different way.
For all my projects I use a Photoshop image with a gradient applied to lights to give a softbox effect to reflections. This worked very simply in previous Lightwave/Octane versions as my jpeg image attached.
However, now it doesn't seem to work, and on top of that I'm not sure at all how all these boxes/fields work (see other image) I looked at the manual but I can't seem to see anything on this change.
A work around could be to add the gradient image to a poly with emission node but that wouldn't be as easy to manage as it being on lights, and of course it means having to redo this for all my previous projects which would be a huge loss of time.
Has anyone else come across this and worked out what to do? If this is a bug will this be fixed in the next version?
Thanks, Alex
I've just downloaded the new LW26 and opened one of my existing LW24 scene's and it looks like the way that images are added to lights has been overhauled in a different way.
For all my projects I use a Photoshop image with a gradient applied to lights to give a softbox effect to reflections. This worked very simply in previous Lightwave/Octane versions as my jpeg image attached.
However, now it doesn't seem to work, and on top of that I'm not sure at all how all these boxes/fields work (see other image) I looked at the manual but I can't seem to see anything on this change.
A work around could be to add the gradient image to a poly with emission node but that wouldn't be as easy to manage as it being on lights, and of course it means having to redo this for all my previous projects which would be a huge loss of time.
Has anyone else come across this and worked out what to do? If this is a bug will this be fixed in the next version?
Thanks, Alex