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

Working with basic lights

We’ll start with the most basic of the lights: THREE.AmbientLight.

THREE.AmbientLight

When you create a THREE.AmbientLight, the color is applied globally. There isn’t a specific direction this light comes from, and THREE.AmbientLight doesn’t contribute to any shadows. You would normally not use THREE.AmbientLight as the single source of light in a scene since it applies its color to all the objects in the scene in the same way, regardless of the shape of the mesh. You use it together with other lighting sources, such as THREE.SpotLight or THREE.DirectionalLight, to soften the shadows or add some additional color to the scene. The easiest way to understand this is by looking at the ambient-light.html example in the chapter-03 folder. In this example, you get a simple user interface that can be used to modify the THREE.AmbientLight object that is available in this scene.

In the following screenshots, you can see that we used a simple...