Light estimates ensure you always pick the right equipment.

• Released July 2, 2026

• Availability: all devices, all accounts

Light estimates

Knowing how much light your fixtures will produce is a critical part of planning a lighting setup. Now, Scenario does those calculations for you, all in the context of your diagram.

• For your diagram, choose to calculate in Lux, Foot-candles, or F-stop (and choose your camera settings)

• Any fixture that’s targeting another item will display its calculated illuminance, based on factors like spot/flood, distance, dimmer value, and gels

• Any frames that are placed between the fixture and its target will automatically affect the exposure, including diffusion frames that affect falloff

• Set a fixture to target a bounce frame, and calculate approximate bounced exposure

• Adjust item heights to calculate using real-world three-dimensional distances

• Built-in library fixtures use generic beam spread and output, while Pro users have access to model-specific values from manufacturers

• Select the fixture to see its isolated effect on its target; select the target to see the cumulative illuminance from all items targeting it

“Sun” item

To ensure that light behaves as close to real-world as possible, we’ve made the sun its own type of item.

• It still moves and targets like a fixture, interacts with frames and bounce the same way, but has no beam edges

• Sunlight has effectively no distance-based falloff; instead, just choose a preset brightness, or customize from a meter reading

Frame materials

• Added new bounce materials to choose from: bleached muslin, soft silver, soft & hard mirror

Visibility

• Don’t need to see light estimates? Go to Layers > Types and hide them, so they stay out of your way.

v3.8.1

Small fix: ambient values were not properly factoring into cumulative light levels