Book Image

Real-Time 3D Graphics with WebGL 2 - Second Edition

By : Farhad Ghayour, Diego Cantor
5 (1)
Book Image

Real-Time 3D Graphics with WebGL 2 - Second Edition

5 (1)
By: Farhad Ghayour, Diego Cantor

Overview of this book

As highly interactive applications have become an increasingly important part of the user experience, WebGL is a unique and cutting-edge technology that brings hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the web. Packed with 80+ examples, this book guides readers through the landscape of real-time computer graphics using WebGL 2. Each chapter covers foundational concepts in 3D graphics programming with various implementations. Topics are always associated with exercises for a hands-on approach to learning. This book presents a clear roadmap to learning real-time 3D computer graphics with WebGL 2. Each chapter starts with a summary of the learning goals for the chapter, followed by a detailed description of each topic. The book offers example-rich, up-to-date introductions to a wide range of essential 3D computer graphics topics, including rendering, colors, textures, transformations, framebuffers, lights, surfaces, blending, geometry construction, advanced techniques, and more. With each chapter, you will "level up" your 3D graphics programming skills. This book will become your trustworthy companion in developing highly interactive 3D web applications with WebGL and JavaScript.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Point Sprites

Particle effects is a common technique used in many 3D applications and games. A particle effect is a generic term for any special effect created by rendering groups of particles (displayed as points, textured quads, or repeated geometry), typically with some simple physics simulation acting on the individual particles. They can be used for simulating smoke, fire, bullets, explosions, water, sparks, and many other effects that are difficult to represent by a single geometric model.

One very efficient way of rendering particles is to use point sprites. Throughout this book, we've been rendering triangle primitives, but if you render vertices with the POINTS primitive type, then each vertex will be rendered as a single pixel on the screen. A point sprite is an extension of the POINTS primitive rendering, where each point is provided a size and is textured in the...