# What does the textures map do for a SpotLight and do I need one?

**URL:** <https://discourse.threejs.org/t/what-does-the-textures-map-do-for-a-spotlight-and-do-i-need-one/44357>\
**Category:** Questions\
**Tags:** spotlight\
**Created:** [November 4, 2022, 8:36pm UTC](https://discourse.threejs.org/t/what-does-the-textures-map-do-for-a-spotlight-and-do-i-need-one/44357 "2022-11-04T20:36:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 4

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**Author:** ![byDezign](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.threejs.org/bydezign/32/24605_2.png) [@byDezign](https://discourse.threejs.org/u/byDezign)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2022, 6:55am UTC](https://discourse.threejs.org/t/what-does-the-textures-map-do-for-a-spotlight-and-do-i-need-one/44357/4 "2022-11-05T06:55:55Z")

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Imagine a movie projector or a slide projector from school.

The image is placed in front of the light and then like a movie projector the image spreads through space.

When it hits a surface it will lay that image against the surface (like a movie screen) and also can distort (like if you projected onto a mountain texture)

There’s a bunch of different names for it, But “Projected Texture” or “Texture Projection” is most common.

See this thread of Paul making a version a few years ago with a nice example

> [@Texture Projection](https://discourse.threejs.org/t/texture-projection/3224):
>
> Hi, community! I was curious about how to project a texture, for example, on a plane, like a video projector does. As usual, I’ve invented my own bicycle from the scratch with THREE.ShaderMaterial() and 5 vertices. (Robot Bender.jpg) smile[http://jsfiddle.net/prisoner849/461bvhoc/](http://jsfiddle.net/prisoner849/461bvhoc/) This is a very rought concept, but it’s working as expected. Maybe somebody has/knows about a better approach. If so, I’d like to look at it (if it’s not classified top-secret wink ) …

Also, go to the spotlight example I sent, it has helpers and guides to show you what the light is doing.  
Open the raw image file to see the baseline image then compare to the 3d scene… see how it gets spread and what all the options do etc

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