Where to start with Dynamic Lighting (And using it with Fog of War)

So I'm interested in using dynamic lighting on some of my maps but I have no clue where to even start. Can anyone direct me to some reading material on this that would help a newb out? Also does it work with with Fog of War? I'm using Fog of War on some maps like dungeons and don't want the two features to interfere with each other.

Hi Kastion! Fog of War works nicely together with Dynamic Lighting. They do not interfere but work overlapping. There is also the new "Advanced Fog of War" method available. Wiki docs to help get started, <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Dynamic_Lighting" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Dynamic_Lighting</a> <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Dynamic_Lighting_Examples" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Dynamic_Lighting_Examples</a> <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Advanced_Fog_of_War" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Advanced_Fog_of_War</a> <a href="https://wiki.roll20.net/Fog_of_War" rel="nofollow">https://wiki.roll20.net/Fog_of_War</a> You might also have some results searching on YouTube for Roll20 Dynamic Lighting.

p.s. The super-short description of where to start is -- As GM, go into a Page settings and turn on DL.&nbsp; Go into DL Layer and draw some walls with the line-tool. Go onto the token layer and place some tokens. Go into the Token's advance settings and give it Emits Light, and Has Sight settings.&nbsp; Last click Control-L on a token to see that token's viewpoint. With that overview outline done, you will be able to see exactly what the dynamic light is doing.

Okay I did a lot of reading and I think I got the hang of it. My only concern is how taxing this will be for my player's computers and if they can handle it. For example I have this map with Advanced Fog of War and Dynamic Lighting: With these settings: And I count 21 polygons for dynamic lighting / advanced fog of war / collision detection. This map is 75 x 30. Now... I have a dungeon with roughly 12 rooms and the map is 95 x 75: You can sort of make out the torches. The main room (top left) alone has 12 torches and 2 braziers. These were all placed without planning for dynamic lighting / advanced fog of war. Now I have to remove all light sources and plan them and use as few as possible I assume? I did some plotting and I can do dynamic lighting / advanced fog of war / collision detection with as few as 4 (albeit large) polygons by following the outer edge of the walls all the way around the map from one side to the other then doing the 3 inner sections. Even if I cut down on light sources how labor intensive is this going to be? Will my players even be able to play this map? Also - question: What am I supposed to do about doors? Use polygons on the inside of the door so line of sight sees the door but not behind it? That's 12 or 13 more polygons giving me a running total of about 16 (still less than the first map but the first map has no light sources) Is roll20 designed to withstand this many polygons and light sources? I don't want to use the "Only Update on Drop" option. For one, I told my players no dragging and dropping their tokens, arrow key movement only. Two, even with arrow key movement if they don't stop moving for a few seconds it doesn't update dynamic lighting / advanced fog of war. I'd going to have to tell them to move slowly if I wanted to use that feature. Would really like peoples opinion on this. Am I going to run into performance issues with either of these maps?

This is what my dungeon polygon setup looks like. I used red for doors and made the width of the door double what it was before and ran a line down the center so that for doors you can end up opening from either side you still see part of the door: (Click image to enlarge) It's hard to see but there are green lines all around the whole black area along the edge of the map, basically making it so I only had to make 4 polygons for the whole map. This is what it looks like when you come to a door: I decided to go "Only Update on Drop" option after a bit of reading and testing I'll just tell my players to take it slow. So what do I do for doors? 1) Go to map layer, move door image to gm layer 2) go to dynamic light layer, move the polygon into a black area outside of map walls in case the close the door and I need to move it back? Is that really the best and most efficient way to do doors? And anyone have any tips on optimizing your map and dynamic lighting? I as the GM and having lag issues when I select a character and CTRL+L and move around and I haven't even put down torches and braziers to light the map yet. When I log on with a player test account I made and use incognito mode in Chrome its not very laggy but still chugs along at a slow rate compared to other maps. Anything I can do to improve on this?

How do you handle low light vision? What values do you give the character in the settings?

I've resorted to giving those with Low-Light Vision an "Emits Light" of 30 ft and "Dims" at 1 ft. This assumes there is at least some light in the vicinity like a party members light source, or the moon and stars if you're outside. If anyone has any better way to handle it please let me know. And would like others opinions on my previous posts...

Does Darkvision dim? Will a drow with 120 ft darkvision dim at half way point of 60 ft so 120/60 for drow and 60/30 for example for a tiefling that has 60 ft darkvision or is it solid straight vision for the full distance? And what are you guys using for your fog of war exploration radius? I'm using 120 ft since that's the highest darkvision any character has.

I agree w your decision to use Only Update On Drop, and to perhaps caution the Players, as you said to move fairly slowly, click-by-click with the arrow keys to allow all the updating to occur. From your description I would guess that you're in a range where, some players computers might be more bogged down (low end, older, laptops) than others (desktops, fast processors). I think you might be fine.&nbsp; If any players have significant lag problems, report back here and we can try to troubleshoot ways to ease it up (turning off Advanced Fog and keeping Dynamic Light would be a large savings if necessary, hopefully won't be needed). Darkvision-type questions, I can best refer you to the DL Examples wiki page. Others may join in the thread to answer with their settings/examples.

For the exterior maps, if you want your players to see the rooftops, you can draw an X or an H shape instead of a perimeter Box. Just make sure a line extends to each corner. For the dungeon interiors, you don't actually need to trace the perimeter, so long as you block the corners. Here's a fast method using corner baffles:&nbsp; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY9Z1z_-oSg&t=6m44" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY9Z1z_-oSg&t=6m44</a>... (Added benefit: fewer polygons = less CPU/GPU math. So it should run faster than if you have many short lines tracing circular structures.)

Kastion said: Does Darkvision dim? Will a drow with 120 ft darkvision dim at half way point of 60 ft so 120/60 for drow and 60/30 for example for a tiefling that has 60 ft darkvision or is it solid straight vision for the full distance? And what are you guys using for your fog of war exploration radius? I'm using 120 ft since that's the highest darkvision any character has. If you are playing 5e, darkvision is &nbsp;dim. For the entire range.

keithcurtis said: Kastion said: Does Darkvision dim? Will a drow with 120 ft darkvision dim at half way point of 60 ft so 120/60 for drow and 60/30 for example for a tiefling that has 60 ft darkvision or is it solid straight vision for the full distance? And what are you guys using for your fog of war exploration radius? I'm using 120 ft since that's the highest darkvision any character has. If you are playing 5e, darkvision is &nbsp;dim. For the entire range. I'm playing Pathfinder. I'm using the Multiplier field for Low-Light Vision properly now and I'm not sure if Darkvision dims in Pathfinder I'm having a hard time finding information on this. Gold said: I agree w your decision to use Only Update On Drop, and to perhaps caution the Players, as you said to move fairly slowly, click-by-click with the arrow keys to allow all the updating to occur. Yeah it made a very significant boost to performance. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Gold said: From your description I would guess that you're in a range where, some players computers might be more bogged down (low end, older, laptops) than others (desktops, fast processors). I think you might be fine.&nbsp; That's not going to be an issue and I'll explain what my problem was in a minute. We're all running high-end rigs. My laptop is a $3k gaming laptop and they all have high-end gaming PCs (we're all in a gaming clan together and I suggested we play some D&D) The problem was I didn't read every last detail about Dynamic Lighting as I should have and as a result I thought you had to have "Has Sight" checked on light sources. I also gave sight to all my NPCs. This resulted in the dungeon map having 113 light sources with "Has Sight" toggled and 34 NPCs with "Has Sight" toggled. Every time I moved a PC with CTRL-L activated it was calculating visions for 153 different sources. I went back and untoggled that on all light sources and NPCs and the performance difference when CTRL-L'ing a player character is significant. plexsoup said: For the exterior maps, if you want your players to see the rooftops, you can draw an X or an H shape instead of a perimeter Box. Just make sure a line extends to each corner. For the dungeon interiors, you don't actually need to trace the perimeter, so long as you block the corners. Here's a fast method using corner baffles:&nbsp; <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY9Z1z_-oSg&t=6m44" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY9Z1z_-oSg&t=6m44</a>... (Added benefit: fewer polygons = less CPU/GPU math. So it should run faster than if you have many short lines tracing circular structures.) I'll keep this in mind in the future. For now I'm going to leave the exterior map and dungeon as is as we play in 2 days and I don't have time to redo the maps but that's great for future endeavors.

You might enjoy this thread:&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3304165/dynamic-" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3304165/dynamic-</a>...

The Aaron said: You might enjoy this thread:&nbsp; <a href="https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3304165/dynamic-" rel="nofollow">https://app.roll20.net/forum/post/3304165/dynamic-</a>... Lots of cool setups! Thanks for sharing this! It inspired me to do this in a prison map/scene: The bars of the cells obstruct vision resulting in a view like this for one of the characters in a cell: Moving around in the cell adjusted the angle you can see from and getting close to the bars of the cell gives a better view. That thread is great for inspiration! I wish it wasn't closed I'd share the cool dynamic lighting projects I've been doing.

Kastion said: keithcurtis said: Kastion said: Does Darkvision dim? Will a drow with 120 ft darkvision dim at half way point of 60 ft so 120/60 for drow and 60/30 for example for a tiefling that has 60 ft darkvision or is it solid straight vision for the full distance? And what are you guys using for your fog of war exploration radius? I'm using 120 ft since that's the highest darkvision any character has. If you are playing 5e, darkvision is &nbsp;dim. For the entire range. I'm playing Pathfinder. I'm using the Multiplier field for Low-Light Vision properly now and I'm not sure if Darkvision dims in Pathfinder I'm having a hard time finding information on this. That's OK, it turns out I was wrong, anyway. :) I was going from a pre-errata copy.