# Lighting a Sprite with Light Nodes

----------------------------

Add lighting and shadows to your scene with light nodes.

### Overview

You can use a sprite’s lighting properties, `lightingBitMask`, `shadowCastBitMask` and `shadowedBitMask`, to apply effects such as illumination and shadow casting and receiving. These can be used in conjunction with normal mapping to simulate 3D lighting.

The following figure shows a normal mapped sprite node acting as background and two shadow casting sprite nodes (each with a rabbit texture).

The `SKLightNode` object's `categoryBitMask` matches the lighting bit mask of the background, and the lighting and shadow bit masks of the two rabbits:

```swift
// Create the background sprite node
let background = SKSpriteNode(texture: noiseTexture,
                              normalMap: noiseTexture.generatingNormalMap())
background.position = spriteKitViewController.center
background.lightingBitMask = 0b0001
scene.addChild(background)
     
let x: CGFloat = 150
let y = spriteKitViewController.scene.size.width - 150
     
// Create a light
let lightNode = SKLightNode()
lightNode.position = CGPoint(x: scene.size.width / 2, y: y)
lightNode.categoryBitMask = 0b0001
lightNode.lightColor = .white
scene.addChild(lightNode)
     
// Create two rabbit sprite nodes and assign them with both a lighting and a shadow cast bit mask.
for position in [CGPoint(x: x, y: y), CGPoint(x: y, y: y)] {
                    let rabbit = SKSpriteNode(imageNamed: "rabbit")
                    rabbit.position = position
                    spriteKitViewController.scene.addChild(rabbit)
                    rabbit.lightingBitMask = 0b0001
                    rabbit.shadowCastBitMask = 0b0001
}
```

The resulting scene shows the two rabbits casting shadows over the background (the light is rendered as a white circle). The noise texture gains a 3D look from the normal mapping:

![lighting-a-sprite-with-light-nodes-001](/images/030-skspritenode-lighting-a-sprite-with-light-nodes-001.png)

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