#What you'll learn

How to set up a classic key + rim lighting rig, and when to use point, spot and sun lights.
How the Lighting panel's bands, snap, ambient, specular and self-shadows work together.
How to pick the right normal-map method for your art, or bring in your own.
How to build and order an effect stack, including the animated effects.
How to light a whole set of sprites consistently, and keep colours on palette.

#Before you start

You've lit the sample crystal and exported a GIF with the Beginner guide.
You need a plan that includes Pixxura. Your own sprite up to 480 × 480 (PNG, JPEG, WebP, animated GIF or APNG).
Optional: a palette from Pixxulo to keep the lit result on your game's colours.

Remove the lights you don't want (select one and press Delete).
Click + Point for the key light. Put it above and to one side, give it a warm colour, and raise Intensity.
Click + Point again for the rim light. Put it behind the opposite side, give it a cool colour and a lower Intensity. It outlines the far edge.
Raise Height (z) to light the top faces more evenly; lower it for long, raking light across the surface.
Use Radius and Falloff to control how far each light reaches and how quickly it fades.
Raise a light's Halo to show its glow in the air, like a lantern in fog. Light halos in the air in the Lighting panel turns all halos on or off.

+ Spot adds a cone of light. Set its Angle (where it points) and Cone (how wide it is), for example a flashlight or a stage light.
+ Sun (directional) lights the whole sprite from one direction, like daylight or moonlight. Set its Angle; it has no position or falloff.
Combine a dim sun for overall light with point lights for local sources such as torches.

Open the Lighting panel.
Set Toon bands to the number of light steps you want: fewer bands give a bolder, more graphic look.
Set Ambient, the brightness of the unlit side, and tint it with its colour swatch (cool blue for night, warm brown for a cave).
Add Specular and adjust Shininess for highlights on metal, gems or wet surfaces.
Tick Self-shadows so raised details cast small shadows. Adjust Shadow strength and Bump height (how tall the surface details are).
Under Snap, choose Steps to limit brightness levels, or Sprite palette to use only colours that are already in your sprite.

Open the Normal map panel and switch View to Normals (or press N) to see the shape.
Choose Generate, then a method:
- Pillow: everything rounded, good for soft creatures and blobs.
- Pillow + detail: rounded, plus surface detail from the art's brightness. The default; good for most sprites.
- Bevel: a flat top with sloped edges, good for tiles, buttons and crates.
- Brightness: shape from brightness alone, good for already-shaded art.
Raise Strength for stronger shading, Edge depth for rounder edges, and Smooth to soften noise.
Choose Imported to load your own normal map (same size as the sprite), or Flat for no shape at all.

In Effect stack, add effects with the + buttons. They run top to bottom.
A good order for most sprites: Colour adjust or Hue shift first, then Outline, then Pixel glow, then Drop shadow, then screen-wide looks like CRT last.
Click an effect's name to open its settings. For example Pixel glow has Threshold (which pixels glow), Radius, Strength and Snap to palette; Outline has Colour, Diagonal corners and Inside the sprite.
Untick an effect to compare without losing its settings. Use the arrows to reorder.

Select a light and set Animate to Flicker or Pulse, then its Amount.
Add a timed effect: Hue shift (Turns per loop), Palette cycling (Steps per loop), Wave (Cycles per loop), Heat haze (Rise), Ripple (Rings per loop) or Dither fade.
Set the loop length in Canvas: Loop frames (2 to 64) and FPS (1 to 30). Every timed effect fits whole cycles into the loop, so it repeats without a jump.
Press Space to play and ← / → to step.

Click Library and open a palette (for example from Pixxulo).
In Lighting, the Snap choice now reads Palette and uses those colours. The palette name is shown with a Use sprite colours button to go back.
Snapping is colour-aware: a lit pixel only becomes a palette colour of a similar hue (or a grey), chosen mostly by brightness, so coloured light doesn't turn stone grey.

Light one sprite until it looks right.
Click Open (or Ctrl+O) and load the next sprite. Your lights and stack stay in place.
Export each, or save the setup with Bake & export → Stack (shader config) and load it later with Import stack….

Start from the Torch-lit preset.
Set the key light to Flicker, add a low Ambient with a dark blue tint, and add Pixel glow to the flame pixels.
Export Sprite sheet + JSON at 1× for your game, or APNG for a preview with soft glow.

Draw the sprite or animation in Pixxivi and send it to Pixxura.
Light it, then use Send to App → The lit animation (frames) to Pixxula to pack it with your other sprites.

Ctrl+O open · Ctrl+S export · Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y undo / redo · Space play · ← / → step.
L turns Lighting on and off · N toggles the Normals view · 0 fit · + / − zoom.
Delete removes the selected light.
Padding (0 to 32 pixels) adds room around the sprite for outlines, glows and waves.
The GPU preview badge only affects the live preview. Exports always use the same exact method on every device.
Palette snapping runs on the main processor, so the preview may be a little slower with Snap on Palette or Sprite palette.

Light looks flat. Check the Lighting on chip in the options bar (or press L), make sure the normal map isn't on Flat, and raise Strength.
A glow or outline is cut off at the edge. Raise Padding in the Canvas panel.
The animation doesn't loop smoothly. Make sure every timed effect uses whole cycles per loop (they do by default), and that Loop frames isn't very low.
An imported normal map is rejected. It must be exactly the same size as the sprite.
Colours look muddy after snapping. Try Steps instead of a palette, or raise Toon bands.