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 – coloring the cube


  1. Open the file ch6_Cube.html using your HTML5 Internet browser. You will see a page like the one shown in the following screenshot:

    In this exercise, we are going to compare constant versus per-vertex coloring. Let's talk about the page's widgets:

    • Use Lambert Coefficient: When selected it will include the Lambert coefficient in the calculation of the final color.

    • Constant / Per-Vertex: The two options to color objects explained before.

    • Simple Cube: Corresponds to a JSON object where the vertices are defined once.

    • Complex Cube: Loads a JSON object where the vertices are repeated with the goal of obtaining multiple normals and multiple colors per vertex. We will explain how this works later.

    • Alpha Value: This slider is mapped to the float uniform uAlpha in the vertex shader. uAlpha sets the alpha value for the vertex color.

  2. Disable the use of the Lambert coefficient by clicking on Use Lambert Coefficient. Rotate the cube clicking on it with the mouse and...