# Basic Lighting

Make Beat Saber a brighter place by manually lighting your maps

Content in this section was authored by LittleAsi and Kolezan or derived from original guides by Puds and MandyNasty.
Many thanks to contributors from across the mapping community who made this expanded wiki possible!

• Glossary of Terms

Every map needs to have lighting of some sort. Once you know the tools at your disposal, simplistic manual lighting can be very easy. This link is a video example of very simple manual lighting (note: it does use forced custom colors). You don't need to be an AaltopahWi or a Skeelie to make great lighting!

# Lighting Types

The available lighting types are consistent across each of the built-in game environments, though they may be in slightly different positions or not present in some cases.

• Bottom/Back/Side or "Track" Lights: Generally lights along the side of the track, underneath the track, and sometimes a chevron at the back of the track.
• Side/Top Lasers: Sets of rotating lasers to the sides of the track or above/below the track, depending on which environment you’ve selected. Rotation is set using the Laser Speed function.
• Back Lasers: Static lasers, often in an “X” pattern at the back of the track, behind the chevron.
• Ring Lights: Lights attached to the inside of the large outer rings that spin in almost all environments.
• Ring Spins: Used to create movement in the rings. In environments with both an inner and an our ring, rings spins rotate both rings together.
• Ring Zooms: Used to zoom and unzoom the inner ring in environments that have it. Does not affect the outer ring.
• Laser Speed: Changes the speed of the side laser rotation from stationary (0) to very fast (20). Set independently for the right and left side lasers. Back top lasers do not move. Laser speed increases linearly so 2 is twice as fast as 1 and 5 is five times as fast as 1.

# Lighting Events

Each lighting type can make use of four different lighting events.

• On: Turns a light on that will stay on until you place a different event type.
• Off: Turning a light off can have as much impact as turning it on, or more.
• Flash: Briefly flashes brighter than a standard “on” event then stays on until you place a different event type.
• Fade: Briefly flashes brighter than a standard “on” event then fades off after a couple of seconds.

# Best Practices & Techniques

"The only bad lights are NO lights.... or lightmap."
~ Skeelie

Lighting truly is an art which means that it's much more subjective than mapping. There are relatively few best practices to get started and simple manual lighting is almost impossible to do poorly.

# Key Bindings

Each map editor handles lighting differently so you’ll want to get to know the key bindings and how placements work in your editor of choice. Lighting keybinds vary by editor. Consult your editor's user guide or readme or refer to this helpful list Cross-Editor Keybindings.

# Assigning Lighting Events

Mappers lighting their first map should start by assigning specific lighting types to specific instruments, then branch out from there as they get more experienced. This method won't usually produce the most exciting shows, but it's hard to mess up. This might look like:

• Track Lights: Bass or Kick Drum
• Lasers: Melody
• Ring Lights: Synth A or Cymbals
• Ring Zoom: Synth B

Once this type of basic structure is in place and you're more comfortable with how everything works, you can think about where you might want to change things up for emphasis. Establishing a strict pattern is necessary to create impact when you do make a change; if you emphasize everything, you emphasize nothing (this goes for block placement, too!).

An example from Lighting Mentor, LittleAsi

I usually light the melody with all three lasers (vocal and instrumental on different colors, or primary instrumental and accents on a different color), drums on the ring lights, and either bass or something harmonic like synths on the Bottom/Back/Side (BBS) (a bit much sometimes since they increased BBS intensity). If the drums are too involved to pack onto the ring lights alone, or there's nothing else appropriate for the BBS, I'll move the kick drum to BBS. If the drums are really dominant, I may put the back-top laser on snare duty to dedicate the ring lights to cymbals. The numerous avenues for changing laser behavior and appearance do make them the best candidate for tracking the melody, though. I have used speed 0 lasers for closed hi-hat with various speeds for open hi-hat and cymbal crashes, though, so it definitely doesn't have to be any specific way (just internally consistent).

# Laser Speed Resets

Applying the same laser speed twice in a row will cause it to reset to a random position. For example, setting speed 1 on every snare hit will cause the laser positions to randomize in time with the snare without ever actually changing their rotation speed.

If you don't reset the laser speed it will continue to spin consistently at that speed until changed.

# Off Event Placement

The sounds within a song rarely have a precise end point so there's not always a "correct" time to place the Off event). Be aware of when you're choosing to turn lights associated with specific sounds or instruments off, and apply those decisions consistently throughout the song.

Be cautious about putting off events exactly in the middle of two lights as it can sometimes create an unintended strobing effect.

# Default Environments

There are various built-in environments in Beat Saber which are part of the base game and can be used easily with a few clicks.

The basic structure of each environment is mostly the same. In the Mediocre Map Assistant 2 editor the lighting track looks like this:

# Environment Previews

Many thanks to Aeroluna for the environment screenshots from game version 1.6.

Note: The images below were created using a program called ReShade which increases contrast in post-processing to better highlight lights. Environments appear less dark in-game.

Visual (click to open full size)	Environment
	The First (Default) Environment Info.dat Name: DefaultEnvironment Default Colors: Red & Blue Track Lighting: ✅ Lasers: ✅ (left & right) Track Ring: ✅ (square) Inner Ring: ✅ (square) Equalizer: ✅ Note: As of 1.6 Back Top lasers are below the Track Lasers
	Big Mirror Environment Info.dat Name: BigMirrorEnvironment Default Colors: Red & Blue Track Lighting: ✅ Lasers: ✅ (left & right) Track Ring: ✅ (square) Inner Ring: ❌ Equalizer: ✅
	Nice Environment Info.dat Name: NiceEnvironment Default Colors: Red & Blue Track Lighting: ✅ Lasers: ✅ (top & bottom) Track Ring: ✅ (circle) Inner Ring: ✅ (shape) Equalizer: ✅ Note: As of 1.6 Back Top lasers are below the Track Lasers
	Triangle Environment Info.dat Name: TriangleEnvironment Default Colors: Red & Blue Track Lighting: ✅ Lasers: ✅ (left & right) Track Ring: ✅ (compact square) Inner Ring: ✅ (triangle) Equalizer: ✅ Note: As of 1.6 Back Top lasers are below the Track Lasers
	Crab Rave Environment Info.dat Name: CrabRaveEnvironment Default Colors: Green & Blue Track Lighting: ✅ (& Monstercat Logo) Lasers: ✅ (left & right) Track Ring: ❌ Inner Ring: ✅ (square) Equalizer: ✅ Note: As of 1.6 Back Top lasers are below the Track Lasers. Ring Light position illuminates the five rails at the top.
	Glass Desert Environment Info.dat Name: GlassDesertEnvironment Default Colors: Red & Blue Track Lighting: ✅ Lasers: ✅ Track Ring: ❌ Inner Ring: ❌ Equalizer: ✅ Note: This is the first 360° environment. 360 levels MUST use this and it's not useable for standard levels. Ring Light position controls the horizontal outer rail. Back Top Laser position controls the six rails at the top.
	Green Day Environment Info.dat Name: GreenDayEnvironment Default Colors: Green & Cyan Track Lighting: ✅ Lasers: ✅ (left & right) Track Ring: ✅ (helix) Inner Ring: ❌ Equalizer: ❌ Note: "Green Day" text in the center never turns off.
	Green Day Grenade Environment Info.dat Name: GreenDayGrenadeEnvironment Default Colors: Green & Cyan Track Lighting: ✅ Lasers: ✅ (left & right) Track Ring: ❌ Inner Ring: ❌ Equalizer: ❌ Note: Grenade and "Green Day" text in the center never turn off.
	Imagine Dragons Environment Info.dat Name: DragonsEnvironment Default Colors: Red & Blue Track Lighting: ✅ Lasers: ✅ (left & right) Track Ring: ✅ (square) Inner Ring: ✅ (helix) Equalizer: ✅ Note: Back Top Laser position is the two rails on the far edges of the screen. It will always illuminate the opposite color of what you set it.
	K/DA Environment Info.dat Name: KDAEnvironment Default Colors: Purple & Orange Track Lighting: ✅ Lasers: ✅ (left & right) Track Ring: ❌ Inner Ring: ❌ Equalizer: ❌ Note: Ring Light position illuminates the five rails at the top. The lights in the center of the arrows never turn off.
	Monstercat Environment Info.dat Name: MonstercatEnvironment Default Colors: Red & Blue Track Lighting: ✅ (& Monstercat Logo) Lasers: ✅ (left & right) Track Ring: ❌ Inner Ring: ✅ (square) Equalizer: ✅ Note: As of 1.6 Back Top lasers are below the Track Lasers. Ring Light position illuminates the five rails at the top.
	Origins Environment Info.dat Name: Origins Default Colors: Yellow & Pink notes, Blue & Light Blue lights Track Lighting: ✅ Lasers: ✅ Track Ring: ✅ Inner Ring: ❌ Equalizer: ✅
	Panic at the Disco! Environment Info.dat Name: PanicEnvironment Default Colors: Red & Blue Track Lighting: ✅ (& windows) Lasers: ✅ (left & right) Track Ring: ✅ (helix) Inner Ring: ✅ (helix) Equalizer: ✅ Note: Ring Lights are much brighter in this environment than in others.
	RocketLeague Environment Info.dat Name: RocketEnvironment Default Colors: Orange & Blue Track Lighting: ✅ Lasers: ✅ (left & right) Track Ring: ❌ Inner Ring: ❌ Equalizer: ❌

# Setting Your Environment

New default environments become available reasonably often which means that map editors don't always have the complete list available. If the environment you want to use is not an option in your favorite editor's settings you will have to edit your info.dat file to add the environment name.

1. Decide which environment you want to use then copy the info.dat name from the Environment Previews section above.
2. Open your info.dat file in the text editor of your choice.
3. Scroll down to the "_environmentName": section.
4. Paste in the name you copied in Step 1.

NOTE: You cannot use a custom platform in this field. This will be covered in Intermediate Lighting (coming soon!)

# Environment Colors

BeatSaber v1.4 allowed users to set the Red/Green/Blue (RGB) colors of notes, lights, and walls for their game. Mappers can "force" colors in their maps with a little bit of JSON/dat editing. As long as the user has the SongCore mod installed and the Enable Custom Song Colors option enabled the map will be played with the colors you set.

1. Decide what RGB colors you want notes and/or lights and/or walls to be.
   1. Your red, green, and blue values will need to be converted from the normal 0-255 scale to the 0-1 scale. Use a site like EasyRGB to convert your values.
2. Open your info.dat file in the text editor of your choice
3. Scroll down to the "_customData": { section.
4. Paste whichever code blocks below correspond to the colors you want to force within the _customData curly brackets ({ and }) then replace the "r":, "g":, and "b": values with whatever you chose in Step 1.
   1. The "r": and "g": values must have commas after them.

Left Side Block Color (default Red)

"_colorLeft": {
  "r": 0.013660844415416155,
  "g": 0,
  "b": 0.07069587707519531
},

Right Side Block Color (default Blue)

"_colorRight": {
  "r": 0.0014191981941151946,
  "g": 0.14107830811467803,
  "b": 0.07064014358987808
},

Left Side Light Color (default Red)

"_envColorLeft": {
  "r": 0.013660844415416155,
  "g": 0,
  "b": 0.07069587707519531
},

Right Side Light Color (default Blue)

"_envColorRight": {
  "r": 0.0014191981941151946,
  "g": 0.14107830811467803,
  "b": 0.07064014358987808
},

Wall Color (default Red)

"_obstacleColor": {
  "r": 1,
  "g": 0,
  "b": 0
 },

# Previewing Your Lights

These tools will help PC Beat Saber users preview their lighting more accurately. Most editors do not show true-to-life lighting effects.

# In-game with FPFC

First Person Flying Controller (FPFC) is a launch parameter that can be used by either Steam or Oculus users. You will need the FPFCToggle and Music Escape mods, available through the #pc-mods channel on the BSMG discord. FPFC will open an instance of Beat Saber on your desktop and allow you to control it with your keyboard and mouse.

FPFCToggle allows you to use WASD to "fly" around in your map. Music Escape allows you to exit your level by hitting the ESC key (otherwise you must play your song to completion.

For Steam Users: Add fpfc to the Steam launch options.

For Oculus Users:

1. Right click on Beat Saber.exe and create a shortcut.
2. Edit the Target to add "fpfc" to the end of it. For example: C:\Program Files\Oculus\Software\Software\hyperbolic-magnetism-beat-saber\Beat Saber.exe" fpfc

# Online with BS Viewer

BS Viewer by +1 Rabbit is an online tool that is a convienient way to checkout how your map might look in game without the game. Just upload your map zip to the website and preview! Unfortunately IOS and Safari are currently not supported.