3D development has always been something mystic. Starting from the beginning, this book introduces the required basics of 3D development and the knowledge you require to use the Babylon.js framework. It focuses on the simplicity provided by Babylon.js and uses a combination of theory and practice. All the chapters are provided with example files that are ready to run; each example file provides the previously learned features of the framework. Finally, the developers will be ready to easily understand the new features that are added to the framework in the future and use the more advanced features only using the documentation.
Chapter 1, Babylon.js and the TypeScript Language, provides a quick introduction to the Babylon.js story and a course on a fundamental that is the TypeScript language.
Chapter 2, The Fundamentals of Babylon.js and Available Tools, starts with the Babylon.js framework and creates the first 3D scene, showing the simplicity of the framework along with the theory.
Chapter 3, Create, Load, and Draw 3D Objects on the Screen, starts with the concepts of Chapter 2, The Fundamentals of Babylon.js and Available Tools, let's introduce the right way to create 3D scenes and work with 3D artists.
Chapter 4, Using Materials to Customize 3D Objects Appearance, explains the notion of materials in 3D engines. In other words, let's unleash the Babylon.js Standard Material.
Chapter 5, Create Collisions on Objects, focuses on the gameplay itself by managing the collisions in your scenes, including physics simulation.
Chapter 6, Manage Audio in Babylon.js, explains one of the added values of the Babylon.js framework. Let's add and manage sounds, including spatialized sounds, in your scenes.
Chapter 7, Defining Actions on Objects, introduces a smart way to trigger actions on the 3D objects themselves without to many lines of code as some tasks can be a pain for developers.
Chapter 8, Add Rendering Effects Using Built-in Post-processes, shows the preferred part of most of the 3D developers. This shows and explains how to easily beautify the 3D scenes using post-processes effects, combined with the simplicity provided by Babylon.js.
Chapter 9, Create and Play Animations, allows us to play with the animations system provided by Babylon.js. This chapter provides the final skill that you need in order to be ready to build your own professional 3D application!
This book targets HTML5 developers, who want to build complete 3D video games or applications on browsers. The reader should have some familiarity with the JavaScript language and basic 3D representations (notion of vectors and dimensions). The Babylon.js framework is designed to be easy to use, therefore, no 3D development background is needed and beginners are welcome.
Babylon.js Essentials is intended for developers, who want to enter the world of 3D development for the Web or add the Babylon.js framework to their skill set. The notion of object-oriented programming would be helpful to understand the architecture of the Babylon.js framework. Also, familiarity with Web development would be useful to understand the principles used.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning. Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "With TS, typing new Array() is equivalent to new Array<any>()."
A block of code is set as follows:
var skybox = BABYLON.Mesh.CreateBox("skybox", 300, scene);
var skyboxMaterial = new BABYLON.StandardMaterial("skyboxMaterial", scene);
skyboxMaterial.backFaceCulling = false;
skyboxMaterial.reflectionTexture =
new BABYLON.CubeTexture("skybox/TropicalSunnyDay", scene);Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
var myVar: FileAccess = FileAccess.Read; // Equivalent to 0
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Select the file location as you did for Blender to save the Babylon.js scene and click on Export."
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