# Rendering images without the default camera light

**URL:** <https://forum.aousd.org/t/rendering-images-without-the-default-camera-light/1206>\
**Category:** USD\
**Tags:** rendering, python\
**Created:** [February 5, 2024, 5:05pm UTC](https://forum.aousd.org/t/rendering-images-without-the-default-camera-light/1206 "2024-02-05T17:05:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![kaigg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/b9e5f3/32.png) [@kaigg](https://forum.aousd.org/u/kaigg)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2024, 5:05pm UTC](https://forum.aousd.org/t/rendering-images-without-the-default-camera-light/1206/1 "2024-02-05T17:05:18Z")

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I’ve created an animation and now I want to download images representing each frame. I’ve tried using both the usdrecord command line prompt and the FrameRecorder.Record() function in a script, but in both cases there’s an extra light source that I can’t figure out how to remove (GL renderer). In usdview, it can be turned off by deselecting the default camera light, but I don’t see a way to disable that light in either record function.

I’m looking to either:  
a) disable the default camera light in the usdrecord/FrameRecorder.Record() function  
b) get the images from usdview with the light disabled

Any suggestions help, thanks!

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**Author:** ![tomc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8dc957/32.png) [@tomc](https://forum.aousd.org/u/tomc)\
**Post date:** [February 5, 2024, 11:12pm UTC](https://forum.aousd.org/t/rendering-images-without-the-default-camera-light/1206/2 "2024-02-05T23:12:00Z")

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Hi Kaigg,

It looks like that light is added here: [OpenUSD/pxr/usdImaging/usdAppUtils/frameRecorder.cpp at release · PixarAnimationStudios/OpenUSD · GitHub](https://github.com/PixarAnimationStudios/OpenUSD/blob/release/pxr/usdImaging/usdAppUtils/frameRecorder.cpp#L390) … It should only affect renderers that support simple lights, i.e. Storm, but it doesn’t look like there’s a way to disable that right now. If you want to file a github issue, we can use that to let you know when we fix it up; it’s definitely something we’d like to address.

You could try using the UsdImagingGLEngine class directly; it has python bindings and a bit more control, and is the rendering class that the usdview viewport is based on. I don’t know of any image writing capabilities in the usdview app aside from possibly some debugging utilities.

Hope that helps,  
Tom