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)

WebGL Libraries

Before we dive into various WebGL libraries, we should first define what a software library is. Although library and framework are often used interchangeably, they refer to different concepts in computer science. A software library comprises defined code, configuration, documentation, classes, scripts, and more, so that developers may include them in their programs to enhance their products. For example, in developing a program requiring extensive mathematical operations, a developer may include a suitable software library (for example, glMatrix) to reduce the need for writing those operations themselves.

That being said, as you may have noticed, we've built our 3D application in such a way that the classes, utilities, and overall architecture could, eventually, be turned into a library. This process was done intentionally so that we could learn concepts in...