light

Note: This documentation is for the old 0.7.0 version of A-Frame. Check out the documentation for the current 1.5.0 version

The light component defines the entity as a source of light. Light affects all materials that have not specified a flat shading model with shader: flat. Note that lights are computationally expensive we should limit number of lights in a scene.

<a-entity light="color: #AFA; intensity: 1.5" position="-1 1 0"></a-entity>

By default, A-Frame scenes inject default lighting, an ambient light and a directional light. These default lights are visible in the DOM with the data-aframe-default-light attribute. Whenever we add any lights, A-Frame removes the default lights from the scene.

<!-- Default lighting injected by A-Frame. -->
<a-entity light="type: ambient; color: #BBB"></a-entity>
<a-entity light="type: directional; color: #FFF; intensity: 0.6" position="-0.5 1 1"></a-entity>

To manually disable the defaults, without adding other lights:

<a-scene light="defaultLightsEnabled: false">
<!-- ... -->
</a-scene>

Properties

All light types support a few basic properties:

Property Description Default Value
type One of ambient, directional, hemisphere, point, spot. directional
color Light color. #fff
intensity Light strength. 1.0

Light Types

Different types of lights include unique properties. We will go through each type, including its properties and when it may be the right choice.

Ambient

Ambient lights globally affect all entities in the scene. The color and intensity properties define ambient lights. Additionally, position, rotation, and scale have no effect on ambient lights.

We recommend to have some form of ambient light such that shadowed areas are not fully black and to mimic indirect lighting.

<a-entity light="type: ambient; color: #CCC"></a-entity>

Directional

Directional lights are like a light source that is infinitely far away, but shining from a specific direction, like the sun. Thus, absolute position do not have an effect on the intensity of the light on an entity. We can specify the direction using the position component.

The example below creates a light source shining from the upper-left at a 45-degree angle. Note that because only the vector matters, position="-100 100 0" and position="-1 1 0" are the same.

<a-entity light="type: directional; color: #EEE; intensity: 0.5" position="-1 1 0"></a-entity>

We can specify the direction of the directional light with its orientation by creating a child entity it targets. For example, pointing down its -Z axis:

<a-light type="directional" position="0 0 0" rotation="-90 0 0" target="#directionaltarget">
<a-entity id="directionaltarget" position="0 0 -1"></a-entity>
</a-light>

Directional lights are the most efficient type for adding realtime shadows to a scene.

Hemisphere

Hemisphere lights are like an ambient light, but with two different colors, one from above (color) and one from below (groundColor). This can be useful for scenes with two distinct lighting colors (e.g., a grassy field under a gray sky).

<a-entity light="type: hemisphere; color: #33C; groundColor: #3C3; intensity: 2"></a-entity>
Property Description Default Value
color Light color from above. #fff
groundColor Light color from below. #fff

Point

Point lights, unlike directional lights, are omni-directional and affect materials depending on their position and distance. Point likes are like light bulb. The closer the light bulb gets to an object, the greater the object is lit.

<a-entity light="type: point; intensity: 0.75; distance: 50; decay: 2"
position="0 10 10"></a-entity>
Property Description Default Value
decay Amount the light dims along the distance of the light. 1.0
distance Distance where intensity becomes 0. If distance is 0, then the point light does not decay with distance. 0.0

Spot

Spot lights are like point lights in the sense that they affect materials depending on its position and distance, but spot lights are not omni-directional. They mainly cast light in one direction, like the Bat-Signal.

<a-entity light="type: spot; angle: 45"></a-entity>
Property Description Default Value
angle Maximum extent of spot light from its direction (in degrees). 60
decay Amount the light dims along the distance of the light. 1.0
distance Distance where intensity becomes 0. If distance is 0, then the point light does not decay with distance. 0.0
penumbra Percent of the spotlight cone that is attenuated due to penumbra. 0.0
target element the spot should point to. set to null to transform spotlight by orientation, pointing to it’s -Z axis. null

Configuring Shadows

A-Frame includes support for realtime shadow rendering. With proper configuration, objects (both moving or stationary) will cast shadows adding depth and realism to a scene. Since shadows come with many properties, it is very helpful to use the A-Frame Inspector to configure shadows

Light types that support shadows (point, spot, and directional) include additional properties:

Property Light type Description Default Value
castShadow Whether this light casts shadows on the scene. false
shadowBias Offset depth when deciding whether a surface is in shadow. Tiny adjustments here (in the order of 0.0001) may reduce artifacts in shadows. 0
shadowCameraBottom directional Bottom plane of shadow camera frustum. -5
shadowCameraFar Far plane of shadow camera frustum. 500
shadowCameraFov point, spot Shadow camera’s FOV. 50
shadowCameraLeft directional Left plane of shadow camera frustum. -5
shadowCameraNear Near plane of shadow camera frustum. 0.5
shadowCameraRight directional Right plane of shadow camera frustum. 5
shadowCameraTop directional Top plane of shadow camera frustum. 5
shadowCameraVisible Displays a visual aid showing the shadow camera’s position and frustum. This is the light’s view of the scene, used to project shadows. false
shadowMapHeight Shadow map’s vertical resolution. Larger shadow maps display more crisp shadows, at the cost of performance. 512
shadowMapWidth Shadow map’s horizontal resolution. 512

Adding Real-Time Shadows

NOTE: Real-time shadows add performance overhead. When objects in a scene are stationary, or especially when optimizing for mobile devices, be aware of other techniques for realistic shadows, such as baking light and shadow information into a texture before importing assets into A-Frame.

  • 1. Create at least one light with castShadow: true. Three light types support shadows (point, spot, and directional). Of the three, directional lights will have the best performance. Combining an ambient light (without shadows) and a directional light (with shadows) is a good place to start.
<a-scene>
<a-entity light="type: ambient; intensity: 0.5;"></a-entity>
<a-entity light="type: directional;
castShadow: true;
intensity: 0.4;
shadowCameraVisible: true;"
position="-5 3 1.5"></a-entity>
</a-scene>

In the example above, the directional light has lower intensity than the ambient light, for slightly softer shadows. Adding shadowCameraVisible: true creates a visual aid for debugging: objects outside the camera’s view cannot cast or receive shadows.

  • 2. Add the shadow component to objects in the scene that should cast or receive shadows.
<a-gltf-model src="tree.gltf" shadow="cast: true"></a-gltf-model>
<a-circle id="ground" radius="10" rotation="-90 0 0" shadow="receive: true"></a-circle>
  • 3. Adjust the shadow camera position and frustum (shadowCameraTop, shadowCameraRight, …) of the directional light, until it envelops the scene tightly. If the frustum is too small, shadows will be missing or partially clipped. If the frustum is too large, shadows will appear coarse or pixelated. The size of the shadow map (shadowMapHeight: 512, shadowMapWidth: 512) determines the resolution at which shadows are computed, so tightly sizing the shadow camera around your scene will make the best use of this resolution and device performance.

  • 4. Refine shadow appearance. Scene-wide options, affecting all lights, may be configured on the scene’s shadow system.

Shadow System Properties

These global options affect the entire scene, and are set using the shadow system on the <a-scene> root element.

<a-scene shadow="type: pcfsoft">
<!-- ... -->
</a-scene>
Property Description Default Value
type Defines shadow map type (basic, pcf, pcfsoft) with varying appearance and perforance characteristics. pcf
renderReverseSided Whether to render the opposite side as specified by the material into the shadow map. When disabled, an appropriate shadow.bias must be set on the light source for surfaces that can both cast and receive shadows at the same time to render correctly. true
renderSingleSided Whether to treat materials specified as double-sided as if they were specified as front-sided when rendering the shadow map. When disabled, an appropriate shadow.bias must be set on the light source for surfaces that can both cast and receive shadows at the same time to render correctly. true