Book Image

WebGL Beginner's Guide

Book Image

WebGL Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

WebGL is a new web technology that brings hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the browser without installing additional software. As WebGL is based on OpenGL and brings in a new concept of 3D graphics programming to web development, it may seem unfamiliar to even experienced Web developers.Packed with many examples, this book shows how WebGL can be easy to learn despite its unfriendly appearance. Each chapter addresses one of the important aspects of 3D graphics programming and presents different alternatives for its implementation. The topics are always associated with exercises that will allow the reader to put the concepts to the test in an immediate manner.WebGL Beginner's Guide presents a clear road map to learning WebGL. 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 WebGL topics, including drawing, color, texture, transformations, framebuffers, light, surfaces, geometry, and more. With each chapter, you will "level up"ù your 3D graphics programming skills. This book will become your trustworthy companion filled with the information required to develop cool-looking 3D web applications with WebGL and JavaScript.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
WebGL Beginner's Guide
Credits
About the Authors
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Time for action – loading a cone with AJAX + JSON


Follow the given steps:

  1. Make sure that your web server is running and access the file ch2_AJAXJSON.html using your web server.

    Note

    You know you are using the web server if the URL in the address bar starts with localhost/… instead of file://...

  2. The folder where you have the code for this chapter should look like this:

  3. Click on ch2_AjaxJSON.html.

  4. The example will load in your browser and you will see something similar to this:

  5. When you click on the JavaScript alert, you will see:

  6. As the page says, please review the functions loadModel and handleLoadedModel to better understand the use of AJAX and JSON in the application.

  7. What does the modelLoaded variable do? (check the source code).

  8. See what happens when you change the color in the file models/cone.json and reload the page.

  9. Modify the coordinates of the cone in the file models/cone.json and reload the page. Here you can verify that WebGL reads and renders the coordinates from the file. If you modify...