Red Giant Scene Light Relights Footage From Generated Depth, So Use It as a Rescue Tool

Maxon's Red Giant 2027.0 and Universe 2027.0 arrived on 14 October 2026, and the new tool to look at is Scene Light. It is an AI-assisted relighting effect for After Effects that works from generated depth and normal maps. Red Giant Complete is $639 a year, and Universe on its own is $214 a year.

The idea is attractive. Give it a flat piece of footage or an approved still and it builds a rough 3D understanding of the frame, then lets you add light that wraps around surfaces. For a shot where the lighting is slightly wrong and the reshoot is not happening, that is a lifeline.

Our take: treat it as a rescue tool, not a lighting design tool. Depth and normals generated from a single image will always be an estimate, so edges, hair and thin objects are where it will strain. Where we have a 3D scene, we would rather render the right light in the first place, because real lighting passes beat guessed ones.

Test it on the worst shot you have, not the best. That tells you quickly whether it earns a place in the toolkit.