Light Linking in Blender Closer than Ever – Experimental Build Now Available!

One of Cycles’ most requested and longest awaited features has just popped up as an experimental build, making the dream of it making it into an official build closer than ever: yes, allow yourself to believe, light linking is finally making its way into Blender!

While Cycles has proven itself as a powerful and incredibly fast production renderer, with dazzling new features making their way to it at the speed of (path-traced) light, light linking remained one of it’s last great unconquered territories, no more! Check out this video of ChrisP demonstrating the initial implementation of this patch in the experimental blender branch released a few days ago.

Testing the #b3d light linking branch with a closer-to-production example file. The character can be lit separately from the environment for more flexibility (shadow linking is on the roadmap). This is still heavy WIP development but already super fun and promising!! :D pic.twitter.com/fZTfxDJc33

— Andy Goralczyk (inactive) (@artificial3d) April 3, 2023