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title: ShadowMesh category: Addons layout: docs

ShadowMesh

A Shadow Mesh that follows a shadow-casting mesh in the scene, but is confined to a single plane. This technique can be used as a very performant alternative to classic shadow mapping. However, it has serious limitations like:

• Shadows can only be casted on flat planes.
• No soft shadows support.

Code Example

const cubeShadow = new ShadowMesh( cube );
scene.add( cubeShadow );

Import

ShadowMesh is an addon, and must be imported explicitly, see Installation#Addons.

import { ShadowMesh } from 'three/addons/objects/ShadowMesh.js';

Constructor

new ShadowMesh( mesh : Mesh )

Constructs a new shadow mesh.

mesh | The shadow-casting reference mesh.
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Properties

.frustumCulled : boolean

Overwritten to disable view-frustum culling by default.

Default is false.

Overrides: Mesh#frustumCulled

.isShadowMesh : boolean (readonly)

This flag can be used for type testing.

Default is true.

.matrixAutoUpdate : boolean

Overwritten to disable automatic matrix update. The local matrix is computed manually in ShadowMesh#update.

Default is false.

Overrides: Mesh#matrixAutoUpdate

.meshMatrix : Matrix4

Represent the world matrix of the reference mesh.

Methods

.update( plane : Plane, lightPosition4D : Vector4 )

Updates the shadow mesh so it follows its shadow-casting reference mesh.

plane | The plane onto the shadow mesh is projected.
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lightPosition4D | The light position.

Source

examples/jsm/objects/ShadowMesh.js