Book Image

Going the Distance with Babylon.js

By : Josh Elster
Book Image

Going the Distance with Babylon.js

By: Josh Elster

Overview of this book

Babylon.js allows anyone to effortlessly create and render 3D content in a web browser using the power of WebGL and JavaScript. 3D games and apps accessible via the web open numerous opportunities for both entertainment and profit. Developers working with Babylon.js will be able to put their knowledge to work with this guide to building a fully featured 3D game. The book provides a hands-on approach to implementation and associated methodologies that will have you up and running, and productive in no time. Complete with step-by-step explanations of essential concepts, practical examples, and links to fully working self-contained code snippets, you’ll start by learning about Babylon.js and the finished Space-Truckers game. You’ll also explore the development workflows involved in making the game. Focusing on a wide range of features in Babylon.js, you’ll iteratively add pieces of functionality and assets to the application being built. Once you’ve built out the basic game mechanics, you’ll learn how to bring the Space-Truckers environment to life with cut scenes, particle systems, animations, shadows, PBR materials, and more. By the end of this book, you’ll have learned how to structure your code, organize your workflow processes, and continuously deploy to a static website/PWA a game limited only by bandwidth and your imagination.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Part 1: Building the Application
7
Part 2: Constructing the Game
13
Part 3: Going the Distance

Animating the Orbits

BJS has many different ways of accomplishing any given task; animating objects in a scene is no different. Some of the different ways to animate in BJS include the following:

  • Define a reusable BABYLON.Animation object that will interpolate specified properties between an array of keyframes.
  • Import pre-built Animations from a file – BABYLON, GLTF, GLB, OBJ, and so on.
  • Use OnPreRenderObservable to update object properties (e.g., position, rotation, color, and so on) before each frame is rendered.

For our title screen animations, we will be using the first and third methods to animate the rotations and circular orbits of our little solar system, respectively. In later chapters, we will see more of the second.

Putting Spin on the Star and Planets

The rotation of stars and planets is pretty simple, but it can serve as a good review of the principle and practice of keyframe animation. Since animations can be looped or cycled, it&...