A fresh Studio scene has only whatever dim lighting the map ships with, which is why characters can look flat or dark and nothing you change in Material Editor seems to help. The fix is almost always the same: add your own lights. Studio has a built-in lighting system, it’s just tucked away in the Add menu where a lot of people never look.
1. Add a light
Open the Add menu on the left toolbar and choose the Light category. You get a short list of light types. Click one and it drops into the scene and appears in the Workspace tree like any other object, ready to select, move, and adjust.
2. Pick the right type
The three types behave very differently, and picking the wrong one is why a light sometimes seems to do nothing:
| Type | Think of it as | What actually matters |
|---|---|---|
| Directional | The sun | Only its rotation. Parallel rays light the whole scene evenly from one angle, no matter where you place it. |
| Point | A bare bulb | Its position and range. Emits in all directions and fades out with distance. |
| Spot | A flashlight | Position, aim, range, and cone width. A directed cone of light. |
Start with a Directional light for overall scene lighting, then add a point or spot on top for local accents (a lamp, a rim light, a beam through a doorway).
3. Position and aim it
Select the light in the Workspace and the same gizmo you use for everything else appears on it:
- W moves it, E rotates it.
- For a directional light, only rotation matters. Spin it to set the sun angle; where it sits in the scene makes no difference.
- For a point light, only position matters. Move it next to whatever it should illuminate.
- For a spot, do both: place it, then rotate it to aim the cone.
4. Set color, brightness, and shadows
With the light selected, its settings panel gives you:
- Color sets the tint. Warm for sunlight or lamps, cool for moonlight, a saturated hue for mood.
- Intensity is the brightness, and it’s the dial you’ll reach for most. Start low and build up.
- Range (point and spot only) is how far the light reaches before it fades to nothing.
- Spot Angle (spot only) is how wide the cone is, from a tight 1 degree up to a broad 179.
- Enable turns the light off without deleting it, which is the fastest way to test one light at a time.
- Shadow toggles soft shadows for that light.
Common snags
- My new light spawns way too bright, or won’t adjust on its own. When you want a second light of a type you already have, use the proper add or copy control for it. Pressing the wrong, similar-looking button can spawn a light at full intensity that isn’t its own adjustable entry.
- I want to light one character differently from the rest. Studio has no native per-character lighting; lights fall on all characters together. The usual workaround is to render the scene in separate passes (different lighting each time, other characters hidden) and combine the images afterward.
- I want a light that follows the camera the way Character Maker does. That’s the Cam Light feature in the Graphics plugin’s F5 menu. See camera work in Studio.
- I just want an object to glow (a neon sign, a screen, a lamp bulb). That’s an emissive material plus bloom, not a light. See Studio items and props.
Going further
Studio’s built-in lights cover the basics. For real control, hanmen’s Graphics plugin (F5) layers a full Lights tab on top of them: brighter HDR intensity, better shadows, light cookies, and volumetric shafts. One thing that trips people up: volumetric light isn’t a separate light source, it’s a checkbox on an existing light. Every slider is documented in lighting with the Graphics plugin.
For setting a sky and building a night scene (which is as much about the skybox and ambient light as the lights you place), see skyboxes, cubemaps and night scenes.