ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Lightmap

Okay kiddo, so you know how when you draw a picture, you use different colors for different parts, right? Well, imagine if you could do that for a 3D world too. That's what a lightmap is!

When you play a video game, the 3D world needs to look as realistic as possible, and that means it needs to have shadows, highlights, and reflections, just like the real world. But to make all of that happen, the computer needs to do a lot of work behind the scenes.

A lightmap is like a special map that the computer uses to help it figure out how light should bounce around in the 3D world. It's like a coloring book page that tells the computer which parts of the world should be shaded, and how dark or light they should be.

The computer uses the lightmap to figure out where the light is coming from, and how it should reflect off of different surfaces. This makes the world look more realistic, just like real life!

So the next time you play a video game and see shadows or reflections or different shades of color, you can thank the lightmap for making it all possible!