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

Using Three.js with TypeScript

TypeScript provides a typed language that transpiles to JavaScript. This means that you can use it to create your site, and it’ll run just like normal JavaScript in the browser. There are many different ways of setting up a TypeScript project, but the easiest one is provided by Vite (https://vitejs.dev/). Vite provides an integrated build environment and can be seen a bit as an alternative to webpack (which we use for the normal chapter samples).

The first thing we need to do is create a new Vite project. You can do these steps yourself, or you can look in the three-ts folder and just run yarn install there to skip this setup. To get an empty TypeScript project with Vite, all we have to do is run the following code in the console:

$ yarn create vite three-ts --template vanilla-ts
yarn create v1.22.17
warning package.json: No license field
[1/4]   Resolving packages...
[2/4]   Fetching packages...
[3/4]   Linking...