dh.look

Extension: .dh-look
Type ID: dh.look

A look is a named bundle of art direction a map adopts instead of transcribing numbers: the tonemap curve, the exposure, the bloom shape, the diffuse wrap and the light falloff. The engine ships four built-in looks by slug, and a .dh-look file is how you author your own — a house look you write once and every map in the pallet inherits.

A look carries the response chain and nothing else. It never touches your sun direction, your sun or ambient colors, or the intensity scales, because those describe a particular scene rather than a reusable look. A map ported with its source engine’s ambient values keeps them.

Properties

Every field is optional, and an omitted field means “this look does not speak to that setting” — it falls through to the engine default rather than being pinned. That is what makes a look composable.

Property	Type	Required	Description
$type	"dh.look"	no	Type identifier
name	string	no	Display name
description	string	no	One line on what the look reproduces
exposure	float	no	Linear multiplier applied to scene radiance before the curve. Must be > 0
tonemap	string	no	Curve name: reinhardWhite, aces, reinhard, hable or none. Matched case-insensitively
hable	object	no	The coefficients of the hable curve; see The hable block. Read only while the world resolves through that curve
bloom	bool	no	Whether bright areas bloom at all
bloomIntensity	float	no	Linear multiplier the resolved bloom pyramid is added back with. Must be ≥ 0
bloomThreshold	float	no	Linear radiance above which a pixel blooms, tested on its brightest channel. Must be ≥ 0
bloomSoftKnee	float	no	Width of the quadratic knee below the threshold, as a fraction of it. 0–1
bloomDiffusion	float	no	How far the bloom spreads, in pyramid levels rather than pixels. 1–10
bloomAnamorphic	float	no	Aspect distortion of the glow. -1–1; 0 is round, negative stretches vertically
halfLambert	float	no	Diffuse wrap. 0–1: 0 is a hard Lambert terminator, 1 a full Source-style wrap
bakedWrap	float	no	Diffuse wrap on baked light, applied as the lightmap’s MonoSH is evaluated. 0–1: 0 (the default) is Bakery-exact Lambert; 1 lifts L0 by the half-Lambert kernel’s harmonics. Changing it never needs a rebake, and realtime lights keep halfLambert
falloff	string	no	Default point/spot distance curve: physical or unity

The type is inferred from the file extension, so $type is not needed in source files. The compiler adds it automatically during builds.

A value outside the range above is a compile error, not a silent clamp — and it is the same error, from the same validator, that the equivalent field in a map’s own render or lighting block would raise.

The hable block

"tonemap": "hable" selects John Hable’s filmic curve (the Uncharted 2 curve): a toe, a straight middle and a shoulder that reaches exactly white at the white point. With no hable block it is the classic curve, Hable’s published coefficients. A block states only the fields it wants to change.

Field	Type	Required	Meaning
shoulderStrength	float	no	The curve’s A: how strongly the shoulder bends. 0–16; Hable’s value is 0.15
linearStrength	float	no	B, the slope of the straight middle. 0–16; 0.50
linearAngle	float	no	C, the angle of the straight middle. 0–16; 0.10
toeStrength	float	no	D, how strongly the toe bends. 0.001–16; 0.20
toeNumerator	float	no	E, the toe’s numerator. 0–16; 0.02
toeDenominator	float	no	F, the toe’s denominator. 0.001–16; 0.30
whitePoint	float	no	The exposed linear radiance that resolves to white; anything brighter clamps there. 0.01–4096; 11.2

The curve is (x(A·x + C·B) + D·E) / (x(A·x + B) + D·F) − E/F. The engine clamps the exposed radiance at whitePoint, runs it through the curve and divides by the curve at whitePoint, so white is always exactly 1.

This is also Source 2’s own resolve. Source 2 multiplies the exposed color by 2.8 before the curve and clamps at the white point scaled alike; both are a plain multiplier, so a Source 2 map states exposure = 2^bias · 2.8 and whitePoint = W · 2.8 and needs no special case in the engine. Measured against reinhardWhite, Hable darkens shadows, which is why it is a choice and never the default.

looks/punchy.dh-look

{
  "tonemap": "hable",
  "exposure": 2.0,
  "hable": { "shoulderStrength": 0.22, "linearStrength": 0.30, "whitePoint": 6.0 }
}

The curve is resolved by the shared engine client, so every place that draws the world gets the same picture:

Where	Hable curve
Engine, Windows desktop	✅
Engine, iOS and Steam Frame	✅ the shared client resolves it
dh render and captures	✅ the same resolve
Runtime game mods (BONELAB, Schedule I and the rest)	❔ not checked; they draw through the game’s own camera

Full Example

looks/night.dh-look

{
  "name": "Night",
  "description": "Cold, low-key interiors: ACES off, wide soft bloom, full diffuse wrap.",
  "exposure": 1.4,
  "tonemap": "reinhardWhite",
  "bloom": true,
  "bloomIntensity": 0.45,
  "bloomThreshold": 1.1,
  "bloomSoftKnee": 0.6,
  "bloomDiffusion": 8,
  "bloomAnamorphic": -0.24,
  "halfLambert": 1.0,
  "falloff": "physical"
}

Adopting a look

A map’s top-level look field takes either a built-in slug or a reference to a .dh-look asset:

maps/lobby.dh-map

// A built-in slug...
"look": "unity"

// ...a look in this pallet...
"look": "looks/night.dh-look"

// ...or one from a dependency.
"look": "dev.example.looks:looks/night.dh-look"

The built-in slugs are neutral, unity, source and filmic — see the map’s look table for what each reproduces.

filmic names the hable curve with Hable’s published coefficients stated in full, and sets no exposure.

The built-in slugs are reserved

Slugs win. A file named unity.dh-look, or a look whose name is unity, is a compile error, because "look": "unity" would otherwise mean two things at once. Rename the look — the reservation exists so a map’s look field always resolves to exactly one thing.

Cross-pallet references follow the ordinary resolution rules: the core pallet is always available, and any other pallet ID must be a declared dependency in your pallet.dh.

A pallet-wide default

A pallet manifest can name a look of its own, and every map in the pallet picks it up:

pallet.dh

{
  "id": "dev.example.maps.harbor",
  "name": "Night City",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "look": "looks/night.dh-look"
}

This is the weakest authored layer, so it never fights a map that names its own. It is for the case a pallet’s maps all share a house look: state it once, in one place, rather than repeating it in every .dh-map.

Precedence

A look is a seed, never a lock. From weakest to strongest:

#	Layer	Where it is authored
1	Engine defaults	The engine itself; whatever a look leaves unset falls through to here
2	Pallet default look	pallet.dh → look
3	Map’s look	the .dh-map’s look field (a slug or a .dh-look)
4	Map’s explicit fields	the .dh-map’s own render and lighting blocks
5	Live console edit	a stored world.render.* / world.lighting.* value

So a pallet whose default look is night, containing a map that adopts unity and then sets render.exposure, renders at that exposure, with the Unity curve and bloom, and picks up night only for fields both of the others leave unset. Nothing is ever written back to the map, and a console edit is a live override on top rather than an edit of the content.

A look spans two blocks

A look reaches both the render and lighting blocks, because a look spans them — the curve, exposure and bloom are render; the diffuse wrap and the light falloff are lighting. Which block a field is authored in on a map has no bearing on which layer wins: the map’s own lighting.halfLambert beats any look’s halfLambert, exactly as its render.exposure beats any look’s exposure.

Hot rebuild

Like materials, look definitions are re-read on every rebuild rather than cached against a checksum, so editing a .dh-look and recompiling applies on the next map load without restarting the engine.