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

ESSL—OpenGL ES Shading Language


OpenGL ES Shading Language (ESSL) is the language in which we write our shaders. Its syntax and semantics are very similar to C/C++. However, it has types and built-in functions that make it easier and more intuitive to manipulate vectors and matrices. In this section, we will cover the basics of ESSL so we can start using it right away.

Note

This section is a summary of the official GLSL ES specification. It is a subset of GLSL (the shading language for OpenGL).

You can find the complete reference at http://www.khronos.org/registry/gles/specs/2.0/GLSL_ES_Specification_1.0.17.pdf

Storage qualifier

Variable declarations may have a storage qualifier specified in front of the type:

  • attribute: Linkage between a vertex shader and a WebGL application for per-vertex data. This storage qualifier is only legal inside the vertex shader.

  • uniform: Value does not change across the object being processed, and uniforms form the linkage between a shader and a WebGL application...