Applying lighting effects

Lighting is a complex effect dedicated to giving an object pseudo-3D depth by imitating a light source. An algorithm finds node boundaries and graphically elevates them by shading those further from the imaginary light and lighting the closer ones:

To achieve this effect, you'll have to set the location and type of an imaginary light, which shines on the scene and is implemented as shown in the following code snippet:

// chapter8/light/LightingDemo.java
public void start(Stage primaryStage) {
    Light.Distant light = new Light.Distant();
    light.setAzimuth(-135);

    Lighting lighting = new Lighting();
    lighting.setLight(light);
    lighting.setSurfaceScale(5);

    Text text = new Text("FX");
    text.setFill(Color.STEELBLUE);
    text.setFont(Font.font(null, FontWeight.BOLD, 70));

    text.setEffect(lighting);

    Rectangle rect = new Rectangle...