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

In this chapter, we explored how you can work together with Blender and Three.js. We showed how you can use the glTF format as the standard format to exchange data between Three.js and Blender. This works great for meshes, animations, and most textures. However, for advanced texture properties, you will probably need some fine-tuning in either Three.js or Blender. We also showed how you can bake specific textures such as lightmaps and ambient occlusion maps in Blender and use them in Three.js. This allows you to render this information once in Blender, import it into Three.js, and create great shadows, lights, and ambient occlusion without the heavy calculations that Three.js would have to do normally. Note that this, of course, will only work for scenes where the lighting is static, and the geometries and meshes don’t move around or change shape. Often, you can use this for the static parts of your scene. Finally, we looked a bit at how UV mapping works, where vertices...