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

Implementing the shaders


The shaders in this chapter will implement Phong shading and the Phong reflection model. Remember that Phong shading interpolates vertex normals and creates a normal for every fragment. After that, the Phong reflection model describes the light that an object reflects as the addition of the ambient, diffuse, and specular interaction of the object with the light sources present in the scene.

To keep consistency with the Material Template Library (MTL) format, we will use the following convention for the uniforms that refer to material properties:

Material

Uniform

Description

uKa

Ambient property

uKd

Diffuse property

uKs

Specular property

uNi

Optical density. We will not use this feature but you will see it on the MTL file.

uNs

Specular exponent. A high exponent results in a tight, concentrated highlight. Ns values normally range from 0 to 1000.

d

Transparency (alpha channel)

illum

Determines the illumination model for the object...