Lights — basics

A light in PostRoll is a single source of illumination on a scene — a torch, a sunbeam, a magical glyph, a streetlamp. You place lights on the canvas, give each one a colour and a reach, and they light up the scene through any fog of war and ambient darkness you have set.

This page covers placing your first light and the core controls. For softer edges, animations, presets, and weather effects see the other pages in the Lighting section.

Opening the Light Tool

On the canvas toolbar, click the lighting icon (or press L).
The Light Tool panel opens. It has a list of lights at the top and a tabbed inspector for the selected light below.

Placing a light

With the Light Tool open, click + Add light at the top of the panel.
Click anywhere on the canvas to drop the light at that position.
The new light appears in the list and is automatically selected.

You can move a light at any time by clicking it on the canvas and dragging the handle, or by typing new x / y values in the inspector.

The five inspector tabs

When a light is selected, the inspector groups its settings into five tabs:

Tab	What’s there
Animation	Preset picker, effect stack, intensity / speed multipliers, attached particles, keyframe timeline
Geometry	Radius, shape (circle / cone / polygon), bright / dim radii, edge softness, source size (penumbras), shadow knobs
Color	Colour picker, Kelvin temperature slider, per-light colour grading
Vision	Reveals fog of war toggle, respects walls, hard / soft vision behaviour
Advanced	Priority, blend mode, tags, darkness activation range

Don’t worry about reaching them all at once — the basics on this page are mostly under Geometry and Color.

Setting the radius

The Radius slider in the Geometry tab sets how far the light reaches in pixels. Below it, the Outer radius field overrides this — when set, that’s the light’s true reach (the visible disc). Most authors leave them equal.

Setting the colour

The Color tab has two ways to pick a colour:

Colour picker — pick any RGB hex value.
Temperature (Kelvin) — slide between 1000 K (warm tungsten) and 12 000 K (cool daylight). Useful for matching real-world references like candlelight (~1900 K) or overcast daylight (~6500 K).

Setting one updates the other. Use whichever feels more natural — temperature for realistic light, picker for stylised colours.

Setting the intensity

The Intensity slider in the Animation tab controls overall brightness. 1 is full strength; lower values dim the light without changing its colour or reach.

Choosing a shape

In the Geometry tab → Shape select, you can pick:

Circle — the default. Light spreads evenly in all directions.
Cone — a directional spotlight. Two extra controls appear:
- Angle — how wide the cone opens (in radians, ~Math.PI / 3 is 60°)
- Direction — where the cone points
Polygon — a custom shape from a template or hand-drawn.

For polygons, you have two options:

Apply template — pick from Rectangle, Hexagon, Diamond, Plus / Cross, Star, or Trapezoid. The template fits your light’s outer radius.
Draw custom polygon — hands you a click-to-vertex tool to shape the light freehand on the canvas (left-click to add a vertex, double-click or click the start vertex to finish, Esc to cancel).

Setting the rotation

Cones and polygons have a Rotation slider that orients the shape independently of its semantic facing direction. For circles it has no visible effect.

Selecting and deleting

Click a light in the list to select it. Selecting on the canvas works too if the Light Tool is active.
Press Delete (or use the trash button in the list) to remove the selected light.
The list shows Lights (X/Y) where Y is the total and X is what’s currently visible after any tag filter.

Radii, edges, and shadows — bright / dim plateau, edge softness, soft penumbras.
Presets and effects — apply animated recipes like Torch, Pulse, Sunburst.
Animation and timeline — flicker, modifiers, keyframes, particle emitters.