The LightWorks^® Plug-in for TurboCAD^® provides robust support for lighting. Lights are OpenGL-based, quick to add and use, and offer various types including ambient, directional, headlight, point, spot, and sky light. Properties of lights can be adjusted in the Design Director, allowing for the creation of light sets that can be toggled on or off as a group. Each light type has properties that can be managed, such as color, intensity, fall-off, and shadow softness. Directional-specific properties may include beam sharpness, penumbra, and umbra angles, offering a wide range of customization for different lighting needs.

Luminances provide advanced lighting properties that can be assigned to the entire model or to specific objects within it. Multiple lights can be combined, allowing for an ambient luminance to be enhanced by additional lights and luminances. Luminance types include ambient, area, area goniometric, area sky, distant, eye, goniometric, point, projector, simple environment, simple sky, sky, spot, and sun. Each type has unique properties that can be adjusted, such as beam sharpness and penumbra angles, to create natural lighting conditions, artificial environments, or mood lighting for design emphasis.

The LightWorks^® Plug-in for TurboCAD^® integrates with TurboCAD’s Material Editor, offering numerous shaders to create materials and their finishes with a real-time preview, even on model selections. With over 500 included materials and the ability to create hundreds of custom colors, materials, and effects, this plug-in significantly extends rendering capabilities. LightWorks^® materials include both bitmap-based textures and procedural materials, which are designed to avoid repetitive tiling. Bitmap textures can be imported and used as material textures, supporting objects with alpha channel transparency. This is particularly useful for elements like entourage or landscaping, where a 2D image of a tree can render much faster than a high-polygon 3D model, enhancing the material creation process and achieving high-quality, photorealistic renders.