In Canvas Studio, a Directional Light simulates sunlight: a faraway, infinite light source that casts parallel rays across your entire scene. Unlike point or spot lights, directional lights have no visible position or falloff, only a direction and intensity: making them ideal for global illumination, shadows from architectural exteriors, or clean, studio-style key lighting.
color – sets the color of the light rays; use warm tones for sunset or neutral white for midday sun.
intensity – controls how strong the light appears; higher values create harsher lighting and stronger shadows.
castShadow – toggles whether this light generates real-time shadows from occluding objects.
helper – displays a visual gizmo in the scene indicating the direction the light is pointing, helping with orientation.
position – defines where the light appears in space (used for editor visualization); the important factor is its direction, which points from this position toward the origin.
bias – offsets the depth sampling to prevent self-shadowing (a.k.a. shadow acne).
normalBias – nudges shadows away along surface normals to reduce flicker and light leakage on edges.
mapSize (width / height) – resolution of the shadow map texture; increasing it improves sharpness but uses more memory.
camera (near / far) – defines the depth range of the shadow camera frustum; tighter values give better shadow precision.
Directional lights are powerful for defining the overall lighting feel of your scene. Since they affect everything equally and don’t fade with distance, they’re often paired with ambient light or environment lighting for fill. With shadows enabled and tuned, directional lights can simulate anything from harsh desert sun to soft overcast daylight; grounding your scene with bold, clean illumination from above.