Any Roll20 planed update to allow opacity control or view outline of Auras? 09/04/2018

<a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/6446575/slug%7D" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/6446575/slug%7D</a> <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/5068113/is-there-an-api-to-reduce-the-opacity-of-auras/?pageforid=5134305#post-5134305" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/5068113/is-there-an-api-to-reduce-the-opacity-of-auras/?pageforid=5134305#post-5134305</a> <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1785160/aura-you-have-been-doing-it-wrong" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/1785160/aura-you-have-been-doing-it-wrong</a> <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3626823/aura-opacity-setting" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3626823/aura-opacity-setting</a> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I have a player with 60ft darkvision and it basically covers all my current maps another with, A paladin with a 30ft, a warlock with 120ft devil's sight, and a human bard with nothing but a 20/40 torch. I hand waved, the warlock and cut off the aura because he can basically see everything. So I figured, I would look for a way to lower the Opacity Settings of the Auras because I still just about can't see the map. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Opacity would be nice, but if I could switch auras to an "outline only" setting that just shows for the GM that would also make things a lot clearer and players would not have to see all the lines. Has there been any word or announcement on this? I was going to add some sight aura's for true sight/night vision/blind sight of NPCs but I can already see that would be a bit of nightmare currently. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I found a lot of posts on it most of which were years old, one from a couple of months ago. Based on the number of people looking for this answer and how long they have been looking for it.... is their any word of action to resolve this issue from the Roll20 development team?

The auras were never intended to be a replacement for sight ranges; that's what dynamic lighting is for. DL will handle all of the situations you describe and do much more. DL does require a Plus membership. You can also use various API scripts to quickly or even semi-automatically turn auras on and off, but that requires a PRO membership and still wouldn't give you what DL does. It's not Roll20's policy to talk about or promise a feature until it is nearly ready for deployment, so you are unlikely to get any comment on future plans. I'm going to leave this thread open for the time being, in the hopes that someone from the community has another tip or trick as how to accomplish what you are trying to do without moving to a subscription model.

keithcurtis said: The auras were never intended to be a replacement for sight ranges; that's what dynamic lighting is for. DL will handle all of the situations you describe and do much more. DL does require a Plus membership. You can also use various API scripts to quickly or even semi-automatically turn auras on and off, but that requires a PRO membership and still wouldn't give you what DL does. It's not Roll20's policy to talk about or promise a feature until it is nearly ready for deployment, so you are unlikely to get any comment on future plans. I'm going to leave this thread open for the time being, in the hopes that someone from the community has another tip or trick as how to accomplish what you are trying to do without moving to a subscription model. If Aura's aren't for independent sight distance like Dark vision and Devil's sight what are they for? Also, Dynamic lighting in the notes I have seen only shows one AURA, you see it or you don't, am I wrong? Tokens have two aura's by default, I am thinking the first is for Dark vision and the second is for true sight / paladin auras / quick spell range reference etc... None of that is covered by dynamic lighting that I have seen (just started looking at it) but it seems like removing opacity and putting lines or putting the low opacity for range indicators for special abilities is a really useful feature if it didn't end up making the map so hard to see. Which the number of people replacing, If there is no option for these their are a lot of threads requesting them. Is they a way to track paladin aura range without auras or counting squares every time? If their is that would be awesome to know.&nbsp;

Daniel F. said: If Aura's aren't for independent sight distance like Dark vision and Devil's sight what are they for? Quick spell-range references, changing the hue of lighting (to limited degrees), making it clear what squares an irregularly shaped token 'inhabits', to denote the AoE of a negative/positive effect a mob/item may have, to help the GM remember 'auto-rolling to find traps within X feet of me' -- that's all off the top of my head for effects at the tables I've played/GM'd at.

Paladin Aura is not a vision range. All of the examples you listed were for vision ranges. (The Paladin one was unclear and mixed in with three other visions, so I assumed). Although you can certainly use auras to indicate vision, Roll20 offers dynamic lighting for that specific purpose. As you have discovered, they are not suitable for visual range on multiple characters.&nbsp; There is nothing in the wiki to suggest that auras are intended for any singular reason. Roll20 is system agnostic—auras can be used for many purposes. Paladin aura is one reason. Indicating reach is another. Other possibilities include indicating the number of occupied squares for an irregular token, identifying the location of an invisible token for the GM, or highlighting a token for identification (that's the wounded one, the marked one, the enchanted one, etc). There are many innovative listed in the Stupid Tricks thread. [ 1 ][ 2 ][ 3 ][ 4 ][ 5 ] I wish I had a better answer for you. I'm certain that variable opacity would lead to even more innovative uses. Your best bet at this point is to add your vote to the link you posted above , and to encourage others to do so.

keithcurtis said: Paladin Aura is not a vision range. All of the examples you listed were for vision ranges. (The Paladin one was unclear and mixed in with three other visions, so I assumed). Although you can certainly use auras to indicate vision, Roll20 offers dynamic lighting for that specific purpose. As you have discovered, they are not suitable for visual range on multiple characters.&nbsp; There is nothing in the wiki to suggest that auras are intended for any singular reason. Roll20 is system agnostic—auras can be used for many purposes. Paladin aura is one reason. Indicating reach is another. Other possibilities include indicating the number of occupied squares for an irregular token, identifying the location of an invisible token for the GM, or highlighting a token for identification (that's the wounded one, the marked one, the enchanted one, etc). There are many innovative listed in the Stupid Tricks thread. [ 1 ][ 2 ][ 3 ][ 4 ][ 5 ] I wish I had a better answer for you. I'm certain that variable opacity would lead to even more innovative uses. Your best bet at this point is to add your vote to the link you posted above , and to encourage others to do so. Ok, Thanks for your reply. Upvoted.

GenKitty said: Daniel F. said: If Aura's aren't for independent sight distance like Dark vision and Devil's sight what are they for? Quick spell-range references, changing the hue of lighting (to limited degrees), making it clear what squares an irregularly shaped token 'inhabits', to denote the AoE of a negative/positive effect a mob/item may have, to help the GM remember 'auto-rolling to find traps within X feet of me' -- that's all off the top of my head for effects at the tables I've played/GM'd at. That looks like a lot of over lapping auras which creates the same visibility problem I have now trying to use them for sight ranges. Adding those, or replacing those ether makes the use worse, or replaces it with the same issue from a different source. I think, for now anyway I am just going to turn them all off and use the ruler. So I can see. I keep trying to add automation but mostly I am met with Roll20 not being able to accommodate my dreams other than the flat surface to play on.

Having multiple auras on at the same time can indeed cause issues.&nbsp; I certainly didn't mean to imply that all those situations were happening simultaneously! :)&nbsp; You asked for what the auras were for, I gave you a list of uses off the top of my head.&nbsp; You pick and choose based on the needs of the table at the time and how well you can see.&nbsp;&nbsp; This is one of those subjective issues where what one person can deal with another can't. And indeed, Roll20 is meant to emulate your dining/gaming table with a bunch of whiteboards/sheets of graph paper and lots of markers for drawing and pogs/minis.&nbsp; What people manage with automation in the way of API is impressive. Anyway, the best of luck to you!

GenKitty said: Having multiple auras on at the same time can indeed cause issues.&nbsp; I certainly didn't mean to imply that all those situations were happening simultaneously! :)&nbsp; You asked for what the auras were for, I gave you a list of uses off the top of my head.&nbsp; You pick and choose based on the needs of the table at the time and how well you can see.&nbsp;&nbsp; This is one of those subjective issues where what one person can deal with another can't. And indeed, Roll20 is meant to emulate your dining/gaming table with a bunch of whiteboards/sheets of graph paper and lots of markers for drawing and pogs/minis.&nbsp; What people manage with automation in the way of API is impressive. Anyway, the best of luck to you! Understood, And I should say... Thankyou for your input. I get on point and forget to mention that I am grateful for your reply and advice here. I was just trying to figure out how to use them and my group went with sight. I see now that without opacity controls, they are at best something you turn on in the token for reference and turn off ( as you pointed out&nbsp; simultaneously is bad ) . leaving them up while them being a highlighted field instead of a distance limit delimiter becomes a problem. I wish we had more than 2 and I could turn them on/off with macros, instead of going into tokens. While I understand, the table simulation aspect, I am trying to make the best of the lost of the in person experience by replacing it with as much stream lining automation as I can. Which is why I spent a great deal of time on macros, enemy tokens, and I'm expanding to find and pull in any additional features I can use. I basically understand from your post and Keithcurtis' post..."your using it wrong"... and why. So I am disappointed not to have an option I thought I had, but its not game ending or anything. I am always looking for ways to improve, and&nbsp; Keithcurtis did point me to a thread where they showed how to use auras for effects like poison gas and scaling light for night and day. So they are useful but I was expecting more character uses from the character token feature than map... but I will take what I can get. .&nbsp;

If you don't mind importing images to use yourself rather than built in ones that probably wouldn't be too hard. Something like create an image of a hollow circle of the radius you want with a grid to help lining it up, perhaps with a color indicating the character/type of aura, and lower the opacity of the image. Then upload them as tokens, line them up with the character and resize, then group the character and their radius so they move together. I did something somewhat similar, found a set of spell area tokens that account for three dimensional space for spheres and the like, lowered the opacity in GIMP until they were readable on most maps but allowed good vision through them.

Joseph M. said: If you don't mind importing images to use yourself rather than built in ones that probably wouldn't be too hard. Something like create an image of a hollow circle of the radius you want with a grid to help lining it up, perhaps with a color indicating the character/type of aura, and lower the opacity of the image. Then upload them as tokens, line them up with the character and resize, then group the character and their radius so they move together. I did something somewhat similar, found a set of spell area tokens that account for three dimensional space for spheres and the like, lowered the opacity in GIMP until they were readable on most maps but allowed good vision through them. I did actually play around with a token image to try and do just that, but I don't know how to "group the character and their radius so they move together" and my first attempt was pretty horrible because I used a 260x260 pixel image and even a very thin line became huge when I expanded it to cover the 60ft dwarf darkvision I was trying on. I do like the idea though and if I found the largest a size image I can put into Roll20 then shrunk it down it having just a ring and being otherwise completely transparent it might work. I would need to know how to store it correctly resized and "group it" with the character token, if you can explain that I would be grateful!!! Also, am I correct in assuming I would need to pull it out like a separate token and regroup the two every time we go to a new map and will the Sight range ring token block other tokens when grouped, or can I somehow group it to the player character token on the token level but place it on the map level so it moves with the character but does not interact during normal play?

Joseph M. said: If you don't mind importing images to use yourself rather than built in ones that probably wouldn't be too hard. Something like create an image of a hollow circle of the radius you want with a grid to help lining it up, perhaps with a color indicating the character/type of aura, and lower the opacity of the image. Then upload them as tokens, line them up with the character and resize, then group the character and their radius so they move together. I did something somewhat similar, found a set of spell area tokens that account for three dimensional space for spheres and the like, lowered the opacity in GIMP until they were readable on most maps but allowed good vision through them. It might also be possible to do something similar with making a token multi-sided, and have the alternative token be the above described "token + hollow radius", and then you could just switch between which token to use, essentially turning the aura on/off. I only know the "multi-sided token" feature exist but don't know if it supports tokens off different size or anything about how it works as I haven't used it myself.

In both cases (last two posts) you would need to resize the token. In both cases, this could be heavily automated with the API.

keithcurtis said: In both cases (last two posts) you would need to resize the token. In both cases, this could be heavily automated with the API. So you can't have multi-sided tokens with different sizes? That would be useful for character who can polymorph/wildshape to creatures of different size.

I do not believe so. The token size and the assigned graphic have no programmatic relationship. This is how you would want it to work. Otherwise every token would come in at a different size on the grid, depending on their pixel dimensions. You are not changing anything about the token on a rollable token other than the image that fills that same grid space.

Oh, thanks for the clarification.