# Lighting and usdview, usdrecord discrepancies

**URL:** <https://forum.aousd.org/t/lighting-and-usdview-usdrecord-discrepancies/2376>\
**Category:** Hydra\
**Tags:** rendering\
**Created:** [April 15, 2025, 3:14pm UTC](https://forum.aousd.org/t/lighting-and-usdview-usdrecord-discrepancies/2376 "2025-04-15T15:14:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Arun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@Arun](https://forum.aousd.org/u/Arun)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2025, 3:14pm UTC](https://forum.aousd.org/t/lighting-and-usdview-usdrecord-discrepancies/2376/1 "2025-04-15T15:14:49Z")

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I have a scene with a RectLight and three SphereLights. I tweaked the lights so that it looks good in usdview. Now I observe the following:

- If I switch to a camera defined in the scene (say “OverheadCam”), the scene looks completely blown out, as if the light intensities are far too high. If I then attempt to zoom in or out, even by a tiny bit, the scene redraws and looks correct.
- usdrecord (with camera lights disabled) always records images with the blown-out lighting.

I’m on MacOS Sequoia, and this is a “factory” build of OpenUSD 25.11.

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**Author:** ![Arun](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ee7513/32.png) [@Arun](https://forum.aousd.org/u/Arun)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2025, 4:40pm UTC](https://forum.aousd.org/t/lighting-and-usdview-usdrecord-discrepancies/2376/2 "2025-04-15T16:40:13Z")

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To add some more info: the problem appears to be related to a transformation that we’re applying in the scene to the geometry. We’re converting all the referenced geometry from Z-up/meters to Y-up/cm. The lights are defined _outside_ this transformation.