Spencer Magnusson is a pipeline engineer at DreamWorks, and has been working on 'Light Painter' - a free Blender add-on to interactively add lights and shadows to your scenes.
The Light Paint tool offers various light types, such as point lamps, spot lamps, and area lamps. Users can adjust parameters like light color, distance, power, and ray visibility settings. The Adjust Lamp tool allows for fine-tuning the properties of an existing lamp.
Mesh and Tube Light Paint tools enable the creation of mesh lights and tube lights, each with unique parameters for customization. Mesh lights use emissive materials, while tube lights are ideal for neon lighting effects.
The Sky Paint tool lets users add sun lamps or sky textures and provides options for determining lighting direction, including an "average" mode and an "occlusion" mode. Users can control the sun's elevation to achieve specific lighting effects.
Lastly, the Shadow Paint tool allows users to paint flags on surfaces to cast shadows, but it requires selecting the lights to be flagged. The tool can adjust parameters like flag position, color, and opacity to control shadow creation.
You can find the free download and full documentation on GitHub.