Karma LPE Tag Tutorial: Render Per-Light AOVs for Full Compositing Control

If you want full control over your lighting in compositing, using LPE tags in Karma is a game changer. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to render per-light AOVs in Houdini using Karma and LPE tags so you can tweak, animate, and color-correct individual lights directly in comp instead of being locked into a single beauty pass. This workflow is especially powerful for cinematic lighting, motion design, and lookdev where flexibility in post is critical. We’ll cover: • Setting up LPE tags in Karma • Automatically splitting lights into separate AOVs • Managing Render Vars in Karma Render Settings • Working with EXR passes in compositing (After Effects workflow) • Practical lighting adjustments in comp (flicker, color balance, intensity tweaks) This approach gives you precise control over fill lights, portal lights, emission, and indirect lighting without re-rendering your entire scene. Tested in Houdini 21 with Karma CPU/XPU and USD workflows. If you’re working in Solaris, lookdev, or product-style lighting, this technique will significantly speed up your iteration process. Check out JL Tools Here https://jltools.gumroad.com/ ProEXR for AE https://www.fnord.com/ Quickly organize your files with this tool https://jltools.gumroad.com/l/sxvqs #Houdini #KarmaRender #Houdini3D #CGI #MotionDesign #VFX #Solaris #AOV #Compositing #3drendering 0:00 Intro 3:16 LPE Tag 4:04 Karma Render Settings Setup 4:33 Viewing AOVs in Viewport 7:12 Adding a New Light 8:22 Render Settings 10:12 After Effects & EXRs 11:21 Comping 14:20 Animating Light AOVs 18:21 Adding Motion To Static Passes 20:17 Cryptomattes for window glow 22:01 Final Result