Learn Three.js - Third Edition

Creating fake shadows using a lightmap

In this section, we'll use a lightmap. A lightmap is a texture that contains information about how much the lights in the scene will affect the model. In other words, the effect of the lights is baked into a texture. Lightmaps are baked in 3D software, such as Blender, and contain the light value for each part of the model: 

The lightmap that we'll use in this example is shown in the previous Blender screenshot. The right part of the edit window shows a baked lightmap for the ground plane. You can see that the whole ground plane is illuminated with a white light, and parts of it receive less light, because ...