Intro to Light Linking in Blender 4.0 Alpha! 

Johnny, thank you so much! I used it for the first time just now. I have a scene with a wall in near-white color which is receiving very nice shadows from the HDRI backdrop passing through some rafters and gobos overhead. Then I add an essential spotlight adding more grazing light to my character > the character gets lit nicely but now the wall is blown out and the shadows ruined... Then I remembered I watched this tutorial a while back, so I watched it again to follow along... selected the wall, active selected the light, Ctrl-L > Link Receivers to Emitter > Exclude... a few simple clicks and the result is so much nicer! I think Daz had this kind of functionality years ago with some add-on, and maybe Blender has had an add-on previously too?, but it's so cool we can now just do it in Blender 4.0. Of course, there is always room for improvement. I am thinking how about being able to attenuate the light strength on a given receiver, rather than simply include (100% strength) or exclude (0% strength)! It's probably just a few lines of code! In reference to your own scene - the results are really cool, but also somewhat impossible in real-world photography (without access to futuristic light-absorbing yet light-bouncing materials for the table!). If you wanted to add just a little bit of light to your table right now you would have to employ another low strength area light and set it to only be received by the table, but excluded by all the other objects in your scene. I just did a quick test with two area lights (same location, same shape and size, only differing in strength), a plane, and a Suzanne - set the plane to be excluded from the strong light and set Suzanne to be excluded from the weak light - and it works as expected - but I can see how this approach would quickly become a nightmare if the scene had hundreds of objects in it. It would be much nicer to simply use a single light and say the plane receives, eg. 5% or 10%, of its strength.

This is a highly awaited feature and I know I'll be making use of it. Thanks for the video

This will be so nice...

super cool explanation as usuall from you! thanks! Cool effect! It'S like a small Photoshop replacement ... well now we can adjust more in Blender )))

yay

Hello Johnny, this is a super tutorial, since it really improves the result of your compositions a lot. I think everyone should be studying it; thank you

Great video!

am i crazy or is this perfect for compositing reflections

wow finally they add light include and exclude for object!😪 Great news

downloaded Apha 4.1 and still the light linking menu with link emiters etc.. does not show up in the Shift L.. new to blender.. so any help would be great please

Is this eevee or cycles?