Clarifying Darius' explanation (which I found challenging while updating a version of Mr Doob's procedural city to function with Face3 boxes):
Basically, you are consolidating all your Meshes into one Geometry. For example, if you want to merge a box and a sphere:
var box = new THREE.BoxGeometry(1, 1, 1);
var sphere = new THREE.SphereGeometry(.65, 32, 32);
...into a single geometry:
var singleGeometry = new THREE.Geometry();
...you would create a Mesh for each geometry:
var boxMesh = new THREE.Mesh(box);
var sphereMesh = new THREE.Mesh(sphere);
...then utilize the merge method of the single geometry for each, passing in the geometry and matrix of each:
boxMesh.updateMatrix(); // as needed
singleGeometry.merge(boxMesh.geometry, boxMesh.matrix);
sphereMesh.updateMatrix(); // as needed
singleGeometry.merge(sphereMesh.geometry, sphereMesh.matrix);
Once merged, generate a mesh from the single geometry and add it to the scene:
var material = new THREE.MeshPhongMaterial({color: 0xFF0000});
var mesh = new THREE.Mesh(singleGeometry, material);
scene.add(mesh);
A functional demonstration:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/three.js/r77/three.js"></script>
<!-- OrbitControls.js is not versioned and may stop working with r77 -->
<script src='http://threejs.org/examples/js/controls/OrbitControls.js'></script>
<body style='margin: 0px; background-color: #bbbbbb; overflow: hidden;'>
<script>
// init renderer
var renderer = new THREE.WebGLRenderer();
renderer.setSize(window.innerWidth, window.innerHeight);
document.body.appendChild(renderer.domElement);
// init scene and camera
var scene = new THREE.Scene();
var camera = new THREE.PerspectiveCamera(45, window.innerWidth / window.innerHeight, 0.01, 3000);
camera.position.z = 5;
var controls = new THREE.OrbitControls(camera)
// our code
var box = new THREE.BoxGeometry(1, 1, 1);
var sphere = new THREE.SphereGeometry(.65, 32, 32);
var singleGeometry = new THREE.Geometry();
var boxMesh = new THREE.Mesh(box);
var sphereMesh = new THREE.Mesh(sphere);
boxMesh.updateMatrix(); // as needed
singleGeometry.merge(boxMesh.geometry, boxMesh.matrix);
sphereMesh.updateMatrix(); // as needed
singleGeometry.merge(sphereMesh.geometry, sphereMesh.matrix);
var material = new THREE.MeshPhongMaterial({color: 0xFF0000});
var mesh = new THREE.Mesh(singleGeometry, material);
scene.add(mesh);
// a light
var light = new THREE.HemisphereLight(0xfffff0, 0x101020, 1.25);
light.position.set(0.75, 1, 0.25);
scene.add(light);
// render
requestAnimationFrame(function animate(){
requestAnimationFrame(animate);
renderer.render(scene, camera);
})
</script>
</body>
This is my understanding of the process; any errors here are unintentional as I am still learning three.js and far from an expert. My attempt at customizing Mr. Doob's procedural city code ran into issues with the latest version changes (such as the merge functionality and the switch from quads to triangles for cube geometries), resulting in challenges to achieve proper shading and other visuals.