AmbientLight
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AmbientLight
is a three-dimensional graphics directive that specifies the uniform ambient light of color col to use in coloring 3D surfaces.
Details

- AmbientLight is also known as natural light.
- AmbientLight is typically used to fill areas that do not have enough illumination by casting soft light rays in every direction.
- AmbientLight[col] yields a uniform ambient light of color col.
- Colors of light sources col can be defined by RGBColor, Hue or any other color specification.
- The setting for AmbientLight affects only colors associated with diffuse and specular reflection on a 3D surface.
- Light sources with color specifications of the form {dcol,Specularity[scol]} are effectively taken to have colors dcol for purposes of diffuse reflection, and scol for purposes of specular reflection.
- Diffuse reflection is taken to follow Lambert's law, with light effectively scattered equally in all directions from a surface.
- Specular reflection effectively takes light to be scattered only close to the mirror‐reflection direction, as specified in the notes for Specularity.

Examples
open allclose allBasic Examples (2)Summary of the most common use cases
Scope (2)Survey of the scope of standard use cases
Ambient light is uniformly applied to all the surfaces in the scene:

https://wolfram.com/xid/0bnijrxowfa3a-j9x8e3

Ambient light gives overall lighting on the scene:

https://wolfram.com/xid/0bnijrxowfa3a-gsh9e4

https://wolfram.com/xid/0bnijrxowfa3a-f3mwaz

Generalizations & Extensions (2)Generalized and extended use cases

https://wolfram.com/xid/0bnijrxowfa3a-cglwya

The colored lighting is equivalent to the following explicit setting:

https://wolfram.com/xid/0bnijrxowfa3a-fn9jvz


https://wolfram.com/xid/0bnijrxowfa3a-bjc71q

The neutral lighting is equivalent to the following explicit setting:

https://wolfram.com/xid/0bnijrxowfa3a-flc8mp

Applications (1)Sample problems that can be solved with this function
Possible Issues (1)Common pitfalls and unexpected behavior
Wolfram Research (2021), AmbientLight, Wolfram Language function, https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/AmbientLight.html.
Text
Wolfram Research (2021), AmbientLight, Wolfram Language function, https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/AmbientLight.html.
Wolfram Research (2021), AmbientLight, Wolfram Language function, https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/AmbientLight.html.
CMS
Wolfram Language. 2021. "AmbientLight." Wolfram Language & System Documentation Center. Wolfram Research. https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/AmbientLight.html.
Wolfram Language. 2021. "AmbientLight." Wolfram Language & System Documentation Center. Wolfram Research. https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/AmbientLight.html.
APA
Wolfram Language. (2021). AmbientLight. Wolfram Language & System Documentation Center. Retrieved from https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/AmbientLight.html
Wolfram Language. (2021). AmbientLight. Wolfram Language & System Documentation Center. Retrieved from https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/AmbientLight.html
BibTeX
@misc{reference.wolfram_2025_ambientlight, author="Wolfram Research", title="{AmbientLight}", year="2021", howpublished="\url{https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/AmbientLight.html}", note=[Accessed: 10-July-2025
]}
BibLaTeX
@online{reference.wolfram_2025_ambientlight, organization={Wolfram Research}, title={AmbientLight}, year={2021}, url={https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/AmbientLight.html}, note=[Accessed: 10-July-2025
]}