Ambient Light

Does anyone know If there is a way to create ambient light with dynamic lighting? Normally without any specific light source the room(a) are completely dark, but I don't always like that. I also don't always like having a token fill half the room due to obstacles, and using more light sources than necessary gets old pretty quickly. Thus, is there any way to set an ambient light level with dynamic lighting? Would be really helpful! :)

Quite simple actually. - Go onto the dynamic lighting layer - Drop a token, set up the light source on it (make sure it's visible to all) - Go back to normal layer..voila: invisible to players light source. If you want to be able to do this very quickly and on the fly: - Make some kind of "token map" on which you'll only store the token you link to sheets. - Make a new character sheet and call it "!torch" or something - Make a token on the token map and set it's light, say bit like a torch (usually 40" light, becomes dim past 20")- - Link the token you made to the sheet. - Whenever you need some kind of torch light somewhere, switch to Dynamic Layer, drag/drop the sheet on the table where you need it, switch back to Normal Layer...voila :)

That's what I've been doing, that is easy indeed. But I'm wondering if you can fill the ENTIRE dynamic lighting later with uniform light, rather than from tokens (there are times when using tokens makes weird lighting in complex dungeon crawls)

Hmm, no idea then. That said, why use dynamic lighting at all then if everything is supposed to bathed in light? Just disable it and use fog of war instead? Probably don't quite understand what you're trying to do though :) Edit: Hmmm, I just tested something: - Replace usual line blocking from the dynamic layer with fog of war visibility. - Drop a 100" (dim starts at 0") light token on the dynamic layer, doesn't matter where since there won't be anything blocking the light emitted - Only reveal/hide what you want from the fog of war as PCs explore the area. Kinda gives a permanent, map wide dim light, which is interesting.

That would be interesting. I think it would work well actually. Plus I should have phrased it as "I need to fill CERTAIN rooms with light" I guess I just wish I could have objects on the dynamic lighting layer that light could pierce, but that still blocked line of sight. That way I can have a light source in the middle of a room of pillars, but that the pillars wouldn't make pitch black shadows all over the place and make it a horrendous mess for the players. But I don't think that's possible - I'll just have to avoid situations like that.

You can have an item on the map layer emit light, that is, the map itself, set it to emit light visible to all players. With enforce line of sight checked, you'll have light, but only what the players can effectively see will be revealed if you draw your "blocking lines" on the dynamic light layer correctly. If you only want one room lit, but are worried about line of sight effects, draw your map such that that room is separate, plunk the room on top of the base map, and the room emits light that all players can see. Set up your line of sight blocking lines around the room/"token" and you're all set.

I would actually like this feature too. Tokens don't work perfectly for what I want to do. I want the entire page to be dimly lit (or an entire room) then have light sources casting bright light with blocking lines for those light sources. The reasons tokens don't work too well is because those blocking lines block the light from the "ambient emitters" which means you have to place additional ambient emitters to get the areas behind the blocking lines to be dimly lit as well. This invariably creates sections where multiple ambient emitters overlap, creating more brightly lit chunks of space that look odd. Also, when you make a token emit light with a 0 for the dimly lit radius, there is still a dot of bright light at the center of that token. For an example, create a room with a square of blocking lines near each corner. Place a token in the center of the room to emit dim light. The area behind the pillars will still be in the dark. You then have to create a dim light emitter in each corner to get the whole room dimly lit, but this creates artifacts, or provides enough overlap that there is barely a difference between the room's dim light and bright light. eg: D OOOOOOOOOOO D OOOOOOOOOOOOO OO P OOOOOOO P OO OOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOO D OOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOO OO P OOOOOOO P OO OOOOOOOOOOOOO D OOOOOOOOOOO D O - Open square P - Square lines blocking light D - Token emitting dim light Even just a page setting that would allow you to specify the base darkness level of the page would be sufficient for now. Ideally you couldcreate rectangles (or generic polygons) of ambient light, letting you draw the shape, then specify the default light within that shape. Then just add the intensity of the light to the other lighting calculations and you are done.

Why I made this post a while back: <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/557011/dynamic-light-opacity-slider-player-view#post-557011" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/557011/dynamic-light-opacity-slider-player-view#post-557011</a> Maybe if we can get all the people interested replying, it will get noticed, its a simple and easy to implement feature (doing what roll20 already uses) to solve all the problems listed :)

Indeed. With the complex lighting calculations the system already does (multiple angled lights obscured by an arbitrary number of blocking lines) simply adding an ambient value to the calculation, or allowing for a lighting opacity, seems trivial to implement

Just to show what I am seeing: Here there is a light with 35/0 settings in the center, and in each corner. Note the odd shadowing artifacts, the the points of light at each spot: Here is the same page, but with the lights set to 1000/0, note how the light overlap makes the whole room look brightly lit I can find no way to get the desired result with the current tools available in this sort of situation

Not only that, but having an ambient light levels would reduce the amount of tokens necessary for lighting. I'm no dev but I'm sure that less light-emitting tokens = better performance, which can mean a lot in a huge dungeon map

Is it possible to get a comment from a dev member as to whether adding this is something possible or even on the road map, and if so, how long an implementation might take?

I get the same Stefen, trying to make lighting that isn't pitch black using the 'extra light' tokens never gives convincing light. One token of 1000/1 makes confusing shadows for no reason, lots of them makes various 'shadow edges' like you have, and placing enough of them for a busy city with lots of buildings on dynamic light outlines, it makes a spiderweb of slight shadows that looks like a strange abstract art picture..lol Put enough of them down to get rid of all the shadows, and its so bright I might as well turn dynamic lighting off. I think either having a slider for players like the GM has for opacity on page settings, or the ability to mark a light as 'bypassing' light barriers would be the simplest fixes.

A player opacity slider would be awesome

Stefen said: I would actually like this feature too. Tokens don't work perfectly for what I want to do. I want the entire page to be dimly lit (or an entire room) then have light sources casting bright light with blocking lines for those light sources. Eric B. said: A player opacity slider would be awesome I just purchased my Sponsorship here for the Dynamic Lighting and I was NOT DISAPPOINTED. How can you play any other way?!? BUT, I immediately noticed the system suffered for lack of Ambient Lighting. As a graphic designer, I can tell you that Ambient Lighting is an essential part of any CGI lighting scheme ... Maya, 3D Max, Blender ... they all require ambient lighting to reach their full potential. I think that Roll20 requires Ambient Lighting to reach its full potential. Developers ... don't throttle your absolutely ingenious invention ... Roll20 is just so very, very awesome, please make it better. Cheers! P.S. Notice that Stefen and William R use the same player icon (the DM). Like showing up to a dinner party and seeing someone there is already wearing your fancy dress! HA!

Bob M. said: Stefen said: I would actually like this feature too. Tokens don't work perfectly for what I want to do. I want the entire page to be dimly lit (or an entire room) then have light sources casting bright light with blocking lines for those light sources. Eric B. said: A player opacity slider would be awesome I just purchased my Sponsorship here for the Dynamic Lighting and I was NOT DISAPPOINTED. How can you play any other way?!? BUT, I immediately noticed the system suffered for lack of Ambient Lighting. As a graphic designer, I can tell you that Ambient Lighting is an essential part of any CGI lighting scheme ... Maya, 3D Max, Blender ... they all require ambient lighting to reach their full potential. I think that Roll20 requires Ambient Lighting to reach its full potential. Developers ... don't throttle your absolutely ingenious invention ... Roll20 is just so very, very awesome, please make it better. Cheers! P.S. Notice that Stefen and William R use the same player icon (the DM). Like showing up to a dinner party and seeing someone there is already wearing your fancy dress! HA! I completely agree with everything here. Roll20 is a fantastic tool but I think either the ability to mark a light as "piercing" through barriers OR a dynamic lighting opacity slider would work perfect. I think the slider would be better personally. This way we'd have a neater lighting set up with less tokens required to set up a convincing background light (less work + better performance on lower end computers). I'm all for the slider!

Try this, put a light source at the edge of the map, and move it slowly along. Put blobs on the D.L. layer, you get shifting shadows and rays of light that really look like moon light. I imagine with API you can automate the slow progression, right now I move it manually. An example below: This is a large outdoor battle in a snowy landscape.