Lighting on Roblox, tutorial on lighting options [simplified]

[vibrantkoffing]

Request: Community Rescources
Hello, I am vibrantkoffing. I have been building on Roblox for about two years, and I took building seriously around early November of 2018. I am here to make a guide about:

• Lighting buttons/features and what they mean
• How to use these buttons/features
• More info and a full analysis
• How to avoid errors with lighting

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Table of Contents

1. Types of Roblox lighting

2. Buttons/features and more

3. Buttons/features and more (cont.)

4. Extra information regarding Roblox lighting

5. LightInfluence

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Types of Roblox lighting

Roblox uses two main sources of lighting: 1) Lighting.Compatibility, 2) Lighting.Voxel

Lighting.Compatibility

Firstly, Lighting.Compatibility (formerly known as Lighting.Legacy) is a new form of Roblox lighting. Lighting.Legacy was the lighting you would see in nostalgic Roblox games, basic and default.

What is Lighting.Compatibility

@ConvexRumbler

Compatibility mode simulates our Legacy mode within new engine code (Voxel mode and further), with minimal changes in the engine code and 0 changes in shaders. It’s purpose is to approximate legacy, but not simulate it perfectly. Your game may not look perfectly the same in Compatibility, but it should be playable. Basically compatibility should require no work on your side to fix bugs, while there might be slight differences. We tried to to balance our code sanity and your comfort while developing this feature.
Some work may be required though, mostly on post processing side. For example, black neon is gone, if your game relies heavily on it, you might have to do more work.

What this quote is saying is that Lighting.Compatibility is very similar to the classic Lighting.Legacy.

Main points

Compatibility mode simulates our Legacy mode within new engine code (Voxel mode and further), with minimal changes in the engine code and 0 changes in shaders.

Basically compatibility should require no work on your side to fix bugs, while there might be slight differences.

We tried to to balance our code sanity and your comfort while developing this feature.
Some work may be required though, mostly on post processing side.

Compatibility lighting is supposed to simulate Legacy lighting with slight differences. This new change is progressing in “The Future is Bright” goal.

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Lighting.Voxel

Lighting.Voxel was released before Lighting.Compatibility and after Lighting.Legacy. Voxel lighting is supposed to simulate new and modern form of lighting. In my opinion, Voxel lighting is very nice and simulates what I need perfectly.

What is Lighting.Voxel

@zeuxcg

New voxel engine - we’ve done a series of significant updates to both the voxel lighting engine and the lighting-related parts of the rendering pipeline. We can now represent lighting values above 1, enabling HDR rendering, handle parts that are thinner than 1 voxel much better and have done a lot of internal work to prepare our rendering pipeline for the future. This includes a reworked post-effect chain including Neon.

As I stated before, Voxel lighting simulates realistic and nice-looking light.

Illustration:

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Buttons/features and more

Roblox has developed a simplistic way of editing lighting and ambience. There are a few buttons you must know how to use.

ClockTime and TimeOfDay

The ClockTime and the TimeOfDay all change where the sun/moon (celestial body) is located. Click here to find a plugin to make this goal easier.

Illustrations:

Sorry for the bad image quality.

Fog Properties

There are three fog properties:

1. FogColor
2. FogStart
3. FogEnd

To define these three, refer to the illustration:

Link to illustration + more info.

Fog can be used to make cool effects and cartoony lighting too.

Illustration:

Sorry for the bad image quality.

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Buttons/features and more (cont.)

[This section will briefly review parts of lighting from “synthetic lights”]

How to insert “synthetic lighting”

Simply create a part and double/right click the part in the Explorer, then click “Insert Object” and choose any form of light.

Buttons offered by “synthetic lighting”

The two main buttons are:

1. Ambience
2. Brightness

Ambience changes the basic color you would see when looking in the sky. It may be hard to explain, so maybe look around and explore. You can also think of the ambience as the “tint color.” Brightness is how bright the lighting actually is. Pretty self-explanatory.

Illustration:

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Extra information regarding Roblox lighting

Right/double click the “Lighting” section in the Explorer, click “Insert Object” and you can add ColorCorrection, SunRays, Bloom and Blur effects. Always explore for new ways to edit lighting.

[Helpful plugin here]

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Light Influence

The light influence is the button that allows you to color lighting based on the lighting around. This can make a dark room lit up, an example:

Example

Question:

@KoltonBro

Is there any way to avoid this weird quirk?
When a semi-transparent particle is in a light source, it seems to grant night vision to anyone that looks through them…

Solution:

@Operatik

LightInfluence + large particles are impacted; the larger it is, the easier to influence it with lighting on the very edge, creating undesirable effects.

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I hope this helped you learn the basics of Roblox lighting. I will make a more complex version soon.