Stop Fighting Nodes. Start Compositing.

If you integrate 3D objects into live-action footage, you know the struggle. Getting realistic lighting often ruins your reflections, and getting crisp reflections often blows out your lighting. The industry-standard solution is to use complex Light Path ray-separation—but building that node tree from scratch every time kills your momentum.

The VFX HDRI Shader is a custom Python add-on that brings a professional compositing pipeline directly to your 3D Viewport N-Panel. With a single click, it builds the complex math required to separate your environment rays, allowing you to light your scene with one HDRI while reflecting a completely different one.

Key Features:

• 1-Click Node Generation: Click "Build Setup" and the add-on instantly generates the entire World Shader tree, complete with custom Light Path grouping.

• Independent Ray Control: Use a procedural sky for your lighting and a custom HDRI for your reflections—or vice versa.

• 1-Click Shadow Catcher: Instantly drop a Shadow Catcher plane into your scene. The script automatically switches your engine to Cycles and forces GPU Compute for maximum render speed.

• Native Visual Previews: See your HDRIs directly in the N-Panel without digging through menus.

• Instant HDRI Swapping: A dedicated button to instantly trade your Lighting and Reflection HDRIs to test different visual setups on the fly.

• Built-in Color Grading & Mapping: Independent Hue, Saturation, Value, Rotation, and Scale controls for both lighting and reflection layers, tucked away in clean, collapsible menus.

Who is this for? Freelancers, 3D Generalists, and VFX Artists who want to spend their time creating art, not wiring up repetitive math nodes.

(Note: Ray Separation works perfectly in both Eevee and Cycles, but the 1-Click Shadow Catcher is designed specifically for Cycles rendering).