Direct Light vs. Ambient Light

Although both direct and ambient light illuminate objects in a scene, they are independent of one another, they have very different effects, and they require that you work with them in completely different ways.

Ambient light color takes the form of an RGBA value, where each component is an integer value from 0 to 255. This is unlike most color values in Microsoft® Direct3D®. For more information, see Color Values for Lights and Materials.