A matcap (material capture) texture is one photo of a sphere lit from the front. At render time, the surface normal’s view-space x/y is used directly as the UV into that texture — "a face pointing this way gets the color at this spot on the stored sphere photo." One lookup, nothing else.
That’s why MeshMatcapMaterial can show metal, clay or glass-like looks with zero lights in the scene, at very low cost. This demo skips image files entirely and paints a few radial gradients with the canvas 2D API to build the matcap texture, then hands it to Three as a CanvasTexture.
The catch: the lighting is baked into the texture, so it never moves even as the camera orbits — no real shadows, no relation to actual light direction. Great for fast previews or a stylized look; reach for a PBR material when you need believable lighting.
When to use
Fast prototypes, stylized sculpt/clay looks, and ultra-lightweight scenes where you don’t want to set up lights.