ThreeJS Dynamic Cubemap Reflection is a shimmering showcase built around a chrome sphere that mirrors everything happening around it in real time — a tumbling cube and a twisting torus knot sweep past while the whole scene is reflected on its polished surface.
How it works. The mirror-ball trick relies on a technique called dynamic cube-mapping. Every frame a special six-sided camera — a CubeCamera — sits at the centre of the sphere and photographs the scene in all six directions, stitching the results into a cube map, a tiny 360° snapshot of the surroundings. That snapshot is wrapped back onto the sphere as its environment map, so its near-mirror finish (very low roughness, full metalness) reflects the orbiting shapes and the surrounding sky exactly as they move. The backdrop itself is a high-dynamic-range HDR panorama of a quarry, and ACES filmic tone mapping keeps the bright highlights from blowing out.
How you interact:
- Orbit the camera — drag to swing the view around the sphere; it also drifts on its own with gentle auto-rotation.
- Zoom — pinch or scroll to move in close and inspect the reflections.
- Tune the surface — an on-screen panel of sliders adjusts the sphere's roughness and metalness along with the overall exposure.
One of a set of three.js examples rendered live on the Switch's GPU inside the brewser browser, running entirely offline.