Book Image

Real-Time 3D Graphics with WebGL 2 - Second Edition

By : Farhad Ghayour, Diego Cantor
5 (1)
Book Image

Real-Time 3D Graphics with WebGL 2 - Second Edition

5 (1)
By: Farhad Ghayour, Diego Cantor

Overview of this book

As highly interactive applications have become an increasingly important part of the user experience, WebGL is a unique and cutting-edge technology that brings hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to the web. Packed with 80+ examples, this book guides readers through the landscape of real-time computer graphics using WebGL 2. Each chapter covers foundational concepts in 3D graphics programming with various implementations. Topics are always associated with exercises for a hands-on approach to learning. This book presents a clear roadmap to learning real-time 3D computer graphics with WebGL 2. 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 3D computer graphics topics, including rendering, colors, textures, transformations, framebuffers, lights, surfaces, blending, geometry construction, advanced techniques, and more. With each chapter, you will "level up" your 3D graphics programming skills. This book will become your trustworthy companion in developing highly interactive 3D web applications with WebGL and JavaScript.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)

Setting up the Scene

We can set up the scene by defining some global variables for our application and writing the code for the configure function. Let's analyze this line by line:

let gl, program, scene, clock, camera, transforms, lights,
floor, selectedCar, lightPositions, carModelData,
clearColor = [0.9, 0.9, 0.9, 1];

function configure() {
// ...
}

At this stage, we want to set some of the WebGL properties, such as the clear color and the depth test. Then, we need to create a camera and set its initial position and orientation. We also need to create a camera controls instance so that we can update the position of the camera during scene interactions. Finally, we need to define the JavaScript variables that will be mapped to the shaders.

To accomplish these tasks, we will use Camera.js, Controls.js, Program.js, and Transforms.js from our architecture.

...