Creating fake reflections using an environment map

Calculating environment reflections is very CPU-intensive, and it usually requires a ray tracer approach. If you want to use reflections in Three.js, you can still do that, but you'll have to fake it. You can do so by creating a texture of the environment the object is in and applying it to the specific object. First, we'll show you the result that we're aiming for (see 17-env-map-static.html, which is also shown in the following screenshot):

In the preceding screenshot, you can see that the sphere and cube reflect the environment. If you move your mouse around, you can also see that the reflection ...

Get Learn Three.js - Third Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.