LichtFeld Studio 0.5.4 introduces a .licht project format that keeps datasets, checkpoints, trained models, scene edits, camera paths, and workspace layouts together.
The release arrives three and a half months after v0.5.3 replaced the CUDA renderer with a Vulkan viewer. Reopening a .licht project resumes training, scene refinement, or export without rebuilding the workspace. A new Project Manager browses, searches, filters, previews, renames, and organizes local and external projects, and can embed datasets so a project is self-contained. Autosave, save points, and recovery after interrupted sessions were reworked, including recovery options when a save fails on a full disk.
Normal guided training adds a geometric signal alongside color during gaussian splatting optimization. LichtFeld Studio generates normal maps automatically, and a normal loss, user defined masks, and normal and depth priors control where that guidance applies. The release notes target it at ambiguous scene structure, difficult surfaces, and thin structures.
The MRNF training strategy gains far field reconstruction along with changes to opacity handling, pruning, initialization, and resume behavior. The GUT strategy improves reconstruction quality, exposure correction, undistortion, and handling of difficult scene conditions. Camera support extends to fisheye lenses and more complex distortion, EXR handling improves, and transparent training targets now composite against the selected background.
LichtFeld Studio 0.5.4 also reduces training VRAM, with tighter control of peak memory during refinement and reordering, and the project claims up to 3x faster training than 0.5.3. Viewer memory use drops as well, large PLY files load faster, cached images can be released under memory pressure, and compaction and export use less memory on very large scenes. Training still requires an NVIDIA GPU with compute capability 7.5 or newer.
Projects can now publish directly to the Gallery on lichtfeld.io from inside the app, carrying a title, description, thumbnail, camera view, field of view, background, and presentation settings. Republishing updates the same Gallery entry, and changes made on the Gallery side sync back to the local project. The standalone HTML viewer export adds labels, multiple measurements, screenshots, and VR oriented interaction.
Support for PLY, SOG, SSOG, SPZ, USD, glTF, and GLB is expanded and optimized, with faster and more memory efficient import and export for large models. Unicode paths, Windows file handling, and Wayland and Linux behavior also get fixes, and headless rendering options are improved. The viewport skips unnecessary redraws, runs more smoothly during training, and paces frames better when idle, and undo and redo, crop boxes, depth filters, and scene tree operations are more reliable.
LichtFeld Studio 0.5.4 is available now on GitHub under the GPL-3.0 license. Binaries can also be purchased through the LichtFeld portal.
