Okay, so I wanted to mess around with this “sun” thing in *. I’d seen some cool demos online, and I figured, “How hard could it be?” Famous last words, right?
First, I fired up my usual setup – you know, a basic HTML file, linked up the * library. Nothing fancy, just the bare bones to get something, anything, displayed on the screen. I always start simple, makes it easier to spot when I inevitably screw something up.
Getting Started (and Immediately Confused)
I created a scene, a camera, and a renderer. Standard stuff. Then, I needed a sphere for the sun, right? So I whipped up a SphereGeometry and a MeshBasicMaterial. I figured a bright yellow would do the trick. I added that mesh to the scene, hit render, and… boom! A yellow circle. Not exactly a majestic sun, but hey, it’s a start.
But this sun looked, well, flat. Like a sticker on a black background. Not what I was going for.
The Lighting Struggle
This is where things got a little hairy. I knew I needed light, obviously. So I added an AmbientLight – made the whole scene a bit brighter, but the sun still looked like a flat disc. Okay, no problem, I thought, I’ll just throw in a PointLight. I positioned it right where the sun was, cranked up the intensity, and… huh. Still pretty flat.
- Tried different light colors. Nope.
- Messed with the light’s distance. Still nope.
- Googled furiously. Found a bunch of complicated shaders and stuff I didn’t understand.
It looked like I added two light and then did nothing to the sun, and this made me feel so bad.
The (Partial) Solution
After a lot of trial and error (and a few frustrated sighs), I figured out that MeshBasicMaterial was the problem. It doesn’t react to light! It just displays a color. Duh! I switched to a MeshLambertMaterial, and suddenly, things started to look a bit better. The PointLight actually illuminated the sphere, giving it some depth.
I played around with the material’s properties – emissive color, ambient color, all that stuff. It took a while to find a combination that looked halfway decent. I even added a little bit of a glow effect by creating a second, slightly larger sphere with a transparent material and a very faint emissive color.
It’s still not perfect, mind you. It’s more like a cartoon sun than a realistic one. But it’s a lot better than that flat yellow circle I started with. I’m calling it a win for now. Next time, I’m tackling those fancy shaders… maybe.
