Configuring Dynamic Lighting for Mobs, Items, and Block Entities in Sodium Dynamic Lights

guide

Sodium Dynamic Lights controls how light-emitting things in the game produce illumination, and its settings screen is called SodiumDynamicLights Settings. Everything is handled through that interface and through hotkeys you assign yourself, so no crafting is involved.

Turning Dynamic Lighting On

The Dynamic Light Sources option is the master switch. When it is active, a player carrying a torch, for instance, casts light around them. If you leave it off, none of the other lighting behaviour below will matter.

Choosing an Update Mode

The update rate setting, described on screen as configuring how often dynamic light sources refresh, offers three behaviours:

One mode reduces how frequently light updates are sent, which keeps the game running better but makes the light trail slightly behind the source.
Another mode gives smooth, continuous dynamic lighting.
A third option simply switches dynamic lights off.

Pick the trailing option when performance matters most, and the smooth option when you want the light to follow movement fluidly.

Entities, Mobs, and Dropped Items

Dynamic Entity Lighting governs whether entities receive dynamic light. With it enabled, creatures and dropped items both light their surroundings. Players are an exception: they are always active regardless of this setting.

Two specific entity types have their own dedicated controls, each with a mode selector and a quality setting:

Creeper lighting chooses how creepers emit light. You can turn creeper lighting off entirely, give it a fixed brightness, or let the brightness vary dynamically. Creeper Lighting Quality adjusts how often creeper lighting updates.
tnt lighting works the same way for primed TNT: off, a constant brightness, or a varying one. TNT Lighting Quality adjusts how often TNT lighting updates.

Lower update rates cost less performance; higher rates look smoother.

Block Entities

Dynamic Block Entity Lighting decides whether block entities emit dynamic light. Switch it on if you want those blocks to participate in the lighting system.

First-Person Light

self light source controls whether your own held light shows up in first person. If you run shaders that already include their own dynamic lighting, turning this off is the recommended choice to avoid doubling up.

Water Behaviour

Two related options deal with light sources in water:

Water Sensitivity Check enables a check on water-sensitive light sources. When active, certain items stop giving off light while they are underwater.
Extinguish When Underwater is the companion setting for that behaviour.

Canvas Performance Warnings

If you use Canvas, the settings screen carries two explicit cautions:

Turning off entity dynamic lighting is advised when running Canvas.
Dynamic lighting alongside Canvas is currently heavy on performance.

So on Canvas, expect a cost, and consider disabling entity lighting to reduce it.

Controls

Every action described here is bound to a hotkey rather than a fixed key. To use any of them, open the controls menu and assign the corresponding hotkey yourself. No default key is provided for these actions, so nothing will trigger until you set one.