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Lighting ​

Lighting affects rendered output in the current layer, including 2D primitives, 3D primitives, and media or framebuffer content drawn through image(). It shades character and cell colors while preserving alpha. (☆▽☆)

Ambient light ​

ambientLight() adds light from all directions:

js
t.ambientLight(40);

You can pass grayscale, RGB/RGBA components, CSS strings, arrays, or TextmodeColor values:

js
t.ambientLight(80, 90, 120);
t.ambientLight("#223344");

Multiple ambient lights are additive.

Point lights ​

pointLight() adds light from a position:

js
t.pointLight(255, 220, 180, 20, -20, 40);

You can also pass an object position:

js
t.pointLight("#ffe0a0", { x: 20, y: -20, z: 40 });

Up to five point lights are supported per frame. Additional point lights are ignored.

Falloff ​

lightFalloff() controls point-light attenuation:

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t.lightFalloff(1, 0.04, 0.002);

The formula is:

text
1 / (constant + distance * linear + distance * distance * quadratic)

Negative inputs are clamped to 0. If all values resolve to 0, falloff resets to (1, 0, 0).

Clear lights ​

noLights() removes active lights and resets falloff:

js
t.noLights();

This is useful when one part of the frame should render lit and another should render unlit.

Frame-scoped state ​

Lighting state is frame-scoped and resets for each layer draw callback. Set lights in the same draw callback as the drawing commands they should affect:

js
t.draw(() => {
  t.background(0);

  t.ambientLight(30);
  t.pointLight(255, 220, 160, 18, -18, 40);

  t.rotateY(t.frameCount);
  t.char("#");
  t.charColor(180, 220, 255);
  t.sphere(8);
});