Scene mood and time of day

The Scene Lighting panel is where you set the look of the whole scene — the global darkness, the colour grading, what time of day it is, and any zones that should be darker than the rest. Open it from the toolbar (the moon icon next to the Light Tool).

This page covers ambient + mood + time-of-day + spatial darkness regions. For atmosphere (god rays, weather, volumetric fog) see Atmosphere and weather.

Ambient darkness

The Darkness slider at the top of the panel sets the scene-wide darkness floor:

• 0 — fully bright. Lights add brightness on top, but the world is already lit.
• 1 — pitch black. Only individual lights illuminate anything.

Most “lit but moody” scenes sit around 0.4–0.7. A torch-only dungeon goes to 0.9+.

Global light

Below the slider, the Global light switch and Threshold field implement Foundry-style “always lit unless darkness is high”:

• When global light is on and ambient darkness is below the threshold (default 0.5), per-light activation gating is suppressed — every light renders.
• When darkness rises above the threshold, gating kicks back in (lights with a darkness range only render when the scene’s darkness is in that range).

Use it for scenes that are bright by default but go dark for specific dramatic beats.

Ambient colour

The Ambient colour picker tints the shadowed parts of the scene. Cool blue for moonlit, dusty orange for sunset, sickly green for swamp. Combined with Mood below, you get fine control over the overall palette.

Scene mood

Mood is a curated colour grade applied across the whole rendered scene — like a film LUT. Pick from the swatches in the Scene Mood section:

Mood	Feel
Daylight	Neutral reference; no grading.
Warm Tavern	Amber highlights, soft brown shadows. Firelight feel.
Cold Crypt	Steel-blue shadows, drained mids. Stone-vault.
Eldritch Green	Sickly green dominant, drained reds.
Moonlight	Cool silver-blue, low saturation.
Stormy	Slate midtones, desaturated. Cold rain.
Underdark	Magenta-violet shadows, mossy green highlights.
Hellscape	Crimson highlights, charcoal shadows.

Click a swatch to apply. The Strength slider underneath dials the grade from identity (0) to full (1). Click Clear to remove the mood entirely.

Moods stack on top of everything else — they’re the last thing applied before the picture lands on the canvas. Two scenes with identical lights look completely different under “Daylight” vs “Hellscape”.

Time of day

The Time of Day section automates ambient darkness and tint based on a simulated sun:

Field	Effect
Enabled	When on, time-of-day overrides the ambient darkness slider.
Hour	0..24 — solar position.
Season	Spring / Summer / Autumn / Winter — affects sun height.
Latitude	-90..90 — affects sun angle.

A scene in summer at 12:00 latitude 45 is bright and neutral; the same scene at winter 18:00 latitude 60 is deep blue and dim. Useful for outdoor maps that span hours of in-game time.

When enabled, the manual ambient darkness slider is ignored — the derived value wins.

Spatial darkness regions

Sometimes you want one part of a scene to be darker than the rest — a shadowy alcove inside a lit room, the cellar trapdoor in a tavern. Darkness regions are polygon overlays you draw on the canvas to override the ambient darkness inside their outline.

Drawing a region

1. In Scene Lighting, scroll to Darkness Regions at the bottom.
2. Click + Draw new region. The dialog closes and your cursor enters region-draw mode.
3. Left-click on the canvas to place vertices.
4. Double-click, click the start vertex, or press Enter to finish.
5. Right-click to undo the last vertex; Escape cancels the in-progress draw.

The new region appears in the panel. Each region has its own:

• Darkness slider (0..1) — how dark inside the polygon.
• Tint colour — local ambient tint that overrides the scene-wide one inside the polygon.
• Delete button.

Regions stack on top of the ambient darkness; the higher value wins inside the polygon, so you can carve a darker zone into a brighter scene. Lights still punch through normally — a torch placed inside a darkness region illuminates it locally just like anywhere else.

Putting it together

A typical “twilit clearing” recipe:

1. Set Time of Day on, hour 19, summer, latitude 45.
2. Pick Moonlight mood at strength 0.5.
3. Add a darkness region polygon over the dense thicket on the east side, darkness 0.85.
4. Place a campfire light in the centre of the clearing.

The result is a bright-ish clearing fading to deep blue around the edges, with a darker thicket the players can’t see into until they approach with a torch.

Related

• Atmosphere and weather — adding fog, rain, lightning on top.
• Lights — basics — placing the lights that punch through the ambient darkness.
• Fog memory — keep explored-but-unlit areas dimly visible.