• Home
• Qt 6.4
• Qt Quick 3D
• QML Types
• DirectionalLight
• Qt Quick 3D | Commercial or GPLv3

DirectionalLight

Defines a directional light in the scene. More...

• List of all members, including inherited members

Detailed Description

The directional light emits light in one direction from an unidentifiable source located infinitely far away. This is similar to the way sunlight works in real life. A directional light has infinite range and does not diminish.

If castsShadow is enabled, shadows will be parallel to the light direction.

A directional light effectively have no position, so moving it does not have any effect. The light will always be emitted in the direction of the light's Z axis.

Rotating the light along its X or Y axis will change the direction of the light emission.

Scaling a directional light will only have an effect in the following cases:

• If Z scale is set to a negative number, the light will be emitted in the opposite direction.
• If the scale of any axis is set to 0, the light will be emitted along the world's Z axis.

  Note: Rotating the light will then have no effect.

Let's look at a simple example:

import QtQuick
import QtQuick3D
View3D {
    anchors.fill: parent

    PerspectiveCamera { z: 600 }

    DirectionalLight {
    }

    Model {
        source: "#Sphere"
        scale: Qt.vector3d(4, 4, 4)
        materials: PrincipledMaterial {
            baseColor: "#40c060"
            roughness: 0.1 // make specular highlight visible
        }
    }
}

Here the DirectionalLight uses the default white color, emitting in the direction of the DirectionalLight node's Z axis.

Rotating 60 degrees around the X axis would lead to the following. Instead of emitting straight in the direction of the Z axis, the light is now pointing 60 degrees "down":

DirectionalLight {
    eulerRotation.x: 30
}

For further usage examples, see Qt Quick 3D - Lights Example.

See also PointLight and SpotLight.