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

Summary

Let’s take a step back and review what we’ve covered in this chapter. First, we took another side route to visit the various Babylon.js particle systems, making use of and adapting the Sun Particle System Set for our purposes.

We can look at particle systems in three rough categories of distinction – the “Classic”, “New Wave”, and “Hard Core” monikers. Each references the always-available CPU-bound Particle System, the GPU-bound GPU Particle System, and the mixed Solid Particle System (SPS). While the first two systems are based around 2D billboards and sprites – characteristics that can animate via sprite sheets and the like – an SPS uses a source mesh to generate particles, which can, in turn, be assigned any type of Material desired (we’ll get more into Materials, the different types, their properties, and more in Chapter 10, Improving the Environment with Lighting and Materials).

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