Aurora lets you transform the mood of your maps with real-time 'colour grading' - right inside Owlbear Rodeo. Desaturate a forest glade into gloomy shadow, bathe a tavern in golden-hour warmth, or wash a battlefield in eerie moonlight. It's all done with a GPU shader that runs directly on your map, so there's no image editing, no re-uploading, and changes can be seen instantly.
Aurora gives you four intuitive controls:
- Saturation: boost or drain the colour intensity of your map
- Lightness: brighten a sun-drenched scene or darken a cave
- Hue: overlay a colour tint (red for a burning city, blue for an underwater temple…)
- Opacity: control how strong that tint is, from a subtle wash to a bold colour shift
Mix and match these parameters to create exactly the atmosphere you're after, then save your favourites as presets that persist across every Scene in the Room.
Copy the Aurora manifest URL:
https://aurora-0nm6.onrender.com/manifest.json
Then head to your Owlbear Rodeo Room → Extras → Extensions → + (Add Custom Extension), paste the URL, and confirm.
In the Extensions Manager popover, make sure Aurora is toggled on for this Room. You should see the 
Aurora icon appear in the top-left extension Action tray.
Select and right-click any item on the Map layer and choose Add Aurora from the context menu. That's it — the shader is now attached and ready to configure!
💡 Pro tip: Want to affect multiple maps with a single effect? Draw a large rectangle on the Drawing layer, move it to the Map layer, then Add Aurora to that rectangle. The shader covers the full area of whatever item it's attached to, so one big shape can mood-change your entire Scene in one go.
After adding Aurora, right-click the same item again and choose Aurora Settings. This opens the control panel where you can tweak all four Saturation, Lightness, Hue, and Opacity sliders and preview their changes, and those parameters are set for everyone soon as you release them.
There are also controls here for gradient effects, with a Feather percentage slider that adjusts how much of the shape is covered in a smooth gradient of the effect, and an Invert button that flips the direction of the
💡 Pro tip: Having a map item with a particular effect applied and then layering one or more smaller shaders (with the same effect) on top of it will allow you to have some cool gradient cut-outs, where the smaller shapes use the Feather parameter (and the Invert state if needed) to allow smooth transitions from 0%-effect areas to 100%-effect areas - these smaller items can then be attached to tokens so that they follow movement around the map.
Shaders also inherit a proxy of their parent item's current layer, ensuring that a shader applied to a Prop-layer item (like a bright lamp) will always render above and override a shader applied to a Map-layer item (like a desaturated Darkvision range).
Presets are a huge time-saver, and a great starting point for your own adjustments. Aurora ships with four built-in presets to get you going:
| Preset | Vibe |
|---|---|
| Midnight | Deep desaturation with a cool blue-purple wash - perfect for nighttime encounters |
| Golden Hour | Warm, slightly darkened tones with a golden tint - great for sunset scenes |
| Pre-Dawn | Dimmed with a pale blue overlay - that quiet moment before the sun rises |
| Blood Moon | Heavily desaturated and darkened with a red tint - ominous and foreboding |
These can be recalled and then overwritten with your own remixes of them, plus there are two empty slots ready for your own unique creations.
In the Aurora Settings popover, use the Load Preset… dropdown to pick any saved preset. The sliders snap to those values instantly - it's a great way to audition different moods or use a preset as a starting point before fine-tuning.
Use the Enabled toggle at the top of the Aurora Settings panel to flip the shader on and off without losing your slider positions. This is really handy for comparing the "before and after" (toggle it a few times and you'll immediately see how much atmosphere the effect adds) or for sudden and dramatic mood shifts as you switch the shader right before your players' eyes!
![Screenshot or short recording placeholder: Toggling the effect on and off to compare]
Happy with your settings? Hit Save Current As… to store them. You can:
- Pick a slot: Aurora will auto-select the first empty slot, but you can choose any of the six presets
- Overwrite an existing preset: just select an occupied slot and confirm
- (Re)name it: give your preset a memorable name (up to 16 characters)
Presets are compacted and stored in the Room metadata, so they're shared with every player in the Room and they persist across sessions and Scene changes. A map-layer object that has an Aurora effect attached will save its parameters in its own metadata.
Click the Aurora icon in the top-left extension tray to open the Action popover. This shows your Preset Library, a grid of all six preset slots with their names and current values.
From here you can get an overview of everything you've saved, and manage your library without needing to have a map item selected.
At the top of the Preset Library you'll find two mode buttons:
- Rename: click it, then click any occupied preset to give it a new name
- Clear: click it, then click any occupied preset to empty that slot completely
Both modes highlight the valid targets so you know exactly what you're clicking. Click the same mode button again (or complete the action) to exit the mode.
If you want to zero all of the parameters and start again with this shader, you can use the grey Reset button at the foot of the context menu.
If you want to remove the shader entirely then you can use the red Remove button there. If you accidentally remove the effect, its most recent parameters are stored on that item so that if you want to Add Aurora again, the new shader will pick up those old parameters - this is a 'soft undo' safeguard. Just remember that you may need to move the item back into the Map layer before you can Add Aurora!
If you just want to temporarily turn the effect off while keeping your slider values intact, use the Enabled toggle instead - that way your settings are still there when you switch it back on and you don't need to worry about whether this item is in the Map layer.
In the Action popover, you'll see a section called Scene Items, which lists every item that currently has an Aurora effect attached to it, even if that effect is not changing the item's appearance (ie. it's 'zeroed out' and/or currently disabled).
Within this list you can see a thumbnail of each item, its Accessibility name, and its disabled/enabled state. Clicking on the thumbnail or the name will select that item in the Scene, and double-clicking on either of these will select the item and will also move your viewport to make it centred and full-screen.
The disabled/enabled toggle switches are also interactive, allowing you to toggle one or more Aurora effects from this centralised viewpoint, without having to find, select, and open each Aurora item's context menu. This can be very useful during a busy or complex session, but remember to set your item's Accessibility name so that you can distinguish clearly between the different Aurora effects in the list!
If you run into any issues, have a feature request, or just want to share the cool Scenes you've created with Aurora, come find us with your screenshots on Discord (particularly in the #extensions-showcase channel!):
👉 Join the Owlbear Rodeo Discord
We'd love to hear and see how you're using Aurora at your table. Happy grading! 🎨