# Control lighting in renders Pure prompt tools roll the dice on lighting. "Golden hour" generates an approximation of golden hour, sometimes. "Stormy night" generates whatever the model's training data clustered under that phrase. The lighting drifts between renders even when the prompt doesn't. Intangible splits lighting across two surfaces with two different jobs: the **Sky** and **Time** controls in Build set the geometry of light (where the sun is, what the sky looks like). The **Lighting Presets** picker in Visualize sets mood and atmosphere on top of that. Use both. The geometry locks the direction; the preset picks the look. ## Steps 1. **Set the time of day in Build mode.** Open **Edit Scene Details** (left side panel when a scene is active) and set the **Time** field. 8:30am for soft morning light, 5:30pm for golden hour, 11:00pm for night. The sun position, color temperature, and shadow direction lock to the time. 2. **Optionally set a location.** Toggle the location field on if you want geographic accuracy for sun angle. A scene set in Reykjavik in winter has a different sun path than one set in Mumbai in summer. See [Environment](/build/environment.md). 3. **Toggle weather and atmosphere.** Fog and overcast conditions live in the same Edit Scene Details panel. Useful for soft, diffuse scenes where direct sunlight would be wrong. 4. **Switch to Visualize mode and open the Lighting tab.** The Visualizer panel on the right has Scene / Style / **Lighting** tabs. Click Lighting. 5. **Pick a preset.** The picker opens a grid of named atmospheres – Sunset Cane Glow, Concrete Sunset, Stormy Coastal Tempest, Twilight Forest Depths, Polaroid Hologram Twilight, and dozens more. Each preset is a named lighting look the model has been tuned to honor. 6. **Filter to find the right one.** The filter row supports time of day, environment, and location filters, plus a search field. Faster than scrolling. 7. **Render.** The Build-mode time-of-day plus the Visualize-mode preset together produce consistent, controlled lighting across every shot in the scene. ## Why split lighting across two modes Time of day in Build is geometric: it sets where the sun is and what the sky looks like as a 3D fact. Every shot in the scene shares this fact – the sun doesn't change position from shot to shot. Lighting Presets in Visualize is interpretive: the preset feeds the model detailed lighting prose without you writing it. Mood, color cast, the way fog reads, atmospheric perspective. The preset can change per shot if the brief calls for it. Together: the geometry is locked, the mood is dialed. ## Tips * **Time of day affects the visible sky too, not just shadows.** Setting Time to 5:30pm and toggling fog gives a soft, hazy look that no prompt phrasing reliably reproduces. * **The lighting preset picker is much richer than the docs imply.** Filter by location ("Coastal", "Urban", "Forest") to find atmospheres that fit the scene. Try presets you wouldn't pick by name – the thumbnails surface options the search wouldn't find. * **Custom Styles can override the lighting preset.** If a brand has a specific lighting language (warm and overexposed, cool and shadowed), build a [custom style](/visualize/custom-styles.md) and apply it instead of a preset. The custom style takes precedence. * **Lighting holds across shots in the same scene if the time of day is set.** This is how you get consistent lighting across a sequence – the scene's time of day is shared, the preset is applied per render but tuned the same way. ## Limits * **No manual key/fill/back light placement.** Intangible doesn't expose individual light sources for placement (no three-point lighting rig). Lighting is set holistically through Sky, Time, and Preset. * **Preset behavior varies by image model.** Some models honor the lighting preset prose more tightly than others. If a preset isn't reading on a render, switch the image model. * **No time-of-day, sun, or fog animation within a shot.** A shot has one time of day, one sun position, and one fog state. Environment properties aren't keyframable today. To simulate a sunset over a sequence, set different times on different scenes and cut between them, or render at one time and grade in post. See [Animation and shot time](/overview/concepts/animation-and-shot-time.md) for the full list of what animates per shot and what doesn't. ## Related * [Lighting presets](/visualize/lighting-presets.md) * [Environment](/build/environment.md) – Sky, Time, Location, Fog. * [Custom styles](/visualize/custom-styles.md) * [Style presets](/visualize/style-presets.md) * [Models](/visualize/ai-models.md) * [Controlling AI output](/overview/concepts/control-ai-output.md) --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://help.intangible.ai/overview/how-to/control-lighting-in-renders.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. 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