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

Creating a scene

In Chapter 1, Creating Your First 3D Scene with Three.js, you created a THREE.Scene, so you already know some of the basics of Three.js. We saw that for a scene to show anything, we need four different types of objects:

  • Camera: This determines which part of THREE.Scene is rendered onscreen.
  • Lights: These have an effect on how materials are shown and are used when creating shadow effects (discussed in detail in Chapter 3, Working with Light Sources in Three.js).
  • Meshes: These are the main objects that are rendered from the perspective of the camera. These objects contain the vertices and faces that make up the geometry (for example, a sphere or a cube) and contain a material, which defines what the geometry looks like.
  • Renderer: This uses the camera and the information in the scene to draw (render) the output on the screen.

THREE.Scene serves as the main container for the lights and the meshes you want to render. THREE.Scene itself doesn&...