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An example of dynamic lighting enabled in a place.

Dynamic lighting is a Roblox update introducing a lighting system that provides three main features: shadows (replacing stencil shadows), outdoor ambient light (enabled and disabled by the GlobalShadows property of the Lighting light iconLighting dark iconLighting service), and local light sources (Light).

The original system did not support HDR rendering, shadow mapping and PBR found in other contemporary engines. This would be addressed by the new lighting system known as Future Is Bright which introduced these features. The original system would be replaced by the new system for performance and maintenance reasons.

At release of dynamic lighting, there was initial criticism but often due to lack of technical knowledge on how to change the lighting, such as indoors being completely dark which could be solved by either turning off GlobalShadows or setting the Ambient property to a brighter color in the Lighting light iconLighting dark iconLighting service.

Original system[]

Dynamic lighting was first mentioned in a blog post on January 20, 2012. It was released into the Test1 game environment on April 19, 2013, for player testing, and was finally officially released into the main platform on May 9, 2013. A video showcasing dynamic lighting was released by Shedletsky prior to the launch of the new system.[1] This video was later used by Roblox on the announcement blog post.

On September 30, 2013, dynamic brick shadows were implemented.

On May 29, 2014, new character shadows were released. These were known as "blob shadows", and replaced the former "stencil" system which had previously been used on player models.

On October 3rd, 2015, character shadows were updated to use a simple "shadow-mapping" implementation, restoring the "silhouette" shape of the shadow, whilst still having softer edges than stencil shadows. This also includes some fixes in the coloring of dark zones with colored lights over these months.

Some properties of the original system have been preserved in Lighting.Compatibility, which replaced the original system in June 2019.

Future Is Bright[]

Future Is Bright is a lighting system introducing HDR rendering, shadow mapping and PBR model implementation. Future Is Bright is the successor to the old system introduced by the dynamic lighting update.

On October 3, 2018, Future Is Bright would be introduced as a beta feature. The lighting system would enabled through the Technology mode ("Voxel") while the old system would have its own Technology mode ("Legacy").[2] The new lighting system would be released on December 3 as the first phase of Future Is Bright.[3] On January 28, 2019, the Compatibility mode would also be introduced which would use the same system as Voxel but it would approximately recreate the Legacy mode.[4] On July 17, 2019, the Legacy mode would be deprecated and the old lighting system would be disabled in favor of the new lighting system for performance and maintenance reasons.[5]

Criticism[]

At release of dynamic lighting, there was initial criticism but often due to lack of technical knowledge on how to change the lighting.

Because of the default lighting settings were set for a realistic environment, users complained that indoors were completely dark making them unable to build.[6] This, however, could be solved by either turning off GlobalShadows or setting the Ambient property to a brighter color in the Lighting light iconLighting dark iconLighting service. Another but less efficient solution is to add light sources to every part.

Event[]

Shortly after the introduction of Dynamic Lighting, Roblox hosted an event to celebrate its release. During this event, the Games page had games with Dynamic Lighting featured on the sides of the page. One of the games featured was Bloxburg with LIGHTING.

Gallery[]

References[]

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