Book Image

Learn Three.js - Fourth Edition

By : Jos Dirksen
5 (1)
Book Image

Learn Three.js - Fourth Edition

5 (1)
By: Jos Dirksen

Overview of this book

Three.js has become the industry standard for creating stunning 3D WebGL content. In this edition, you’ll learn about all the features of Three.js and understand how to integrate it with the newest physics engines. You'll also develop a strong grip on creating and animating immersive 3D scenes directly in your browser, reaping the full potential of WebGL and modern browsers. The book starts with the basic concepts and building blocks used in Three.js and helps you explore these essential topics in detail through extensive examples and code samples. You'll learn how to create realistic-looking 3D objects using textures and materials and how to load existing models from an external source. Next, you'll understand how to control the camera using the Three.js built-in camera controls, which will enable you to fly or walk around the 3D scene you've created. Later chapters will cover the use of HTML5 video and canvas elements as materials for your 3D objects to animate your models. You’ll learn how to use morph targets and skeleton-based animation, before understanding how to add physics, such as gravity and collision detection, to your scene. Finally, you’ll master combining Blender with Three.js and creating VR and AR scenes. By the end of this book, you'll be well-equipped to create 3D-animated graphics using Three.js.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Part 1: Getting Up and Running
5
Part 2: Working with the Three.js Core Components
7
Chapter 5: Learning to Work with Geometries
10
Part 3: Particle Clouds, Loading and Animating Models
14
Part 4: Post-Processing, Physics, and Sounds

Summary

With that, we have completed this chapter on textures. As you’ve seen, a lot of textures are available in Three.js, each with a different use. You can use any image in PNG, JPG, GIF, TGA, DDS, PVR, TGA, KTX, EXR, or RGBE format as a texture. Loading these images is done asynchronously, so remember to either use a rendering loop or add a callback when you load a texture. With the different types of textures available, you can create great-looking objects from low-poly models.

With Three.js, it is also easy to create dynamic textures, using either the HTML5 canvas element or the video element – just define a texture with these elements as the input, and set the needsUpdate property to true whenever you want the texture to be updated.

With this chapter out of the way, we’ve pretty much covered all of the important concepts of Three.js. However, we haven’t looked at an interesting feature that Three.js offers: postprocessing. With postprocessing...