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SVG & HTML5 Canvas Tutorial• 7 min read

WebGL & Hardware-Accelerated 3D Graphics

GPU shaders, vertex buffers, fragments, and introducing Three.js

When 2D Canvas is insufficient for high-polygon rendering or 3D scenes, WebGL exposes direct GPU hardware acceleration using GLSL vertex and fragment shaders.

The WebGL Pipeline & Three.js

WebGL runs code directly on the graphics card (GPU) via OpenGL ES shaders.

Vertex Shader: Positions 3D polygon vertices in coordinate space.

Fragment Shader: Calculates final color for every rasterized pixel.

Three.js: A high-level JavaScript library that abstracts low-level WebGL boilerplate, providing Cameras, Scenes, Lights, and Meshes.

Spinning 3D Cube with Three.js Concept
// Three.js high-level abstraction over raw WebGL
import * as THREE from 'three';

const scene = new THREE.Scene();
const camera = new THREE.PerspectiveCamera(75, window.innerWidth / window.innerHeight, 0.1, 1000);
const renderer = new THREE.WebGLRenderer({ antialias: true });

renderer.setSize(window.innerWidth, window.innerHeight);
document.body.appendChild(renderer.domElement);

// Add 3D Cube Mesh
const geometry = new THREE.BoxGeometry(1, 1, 1);
const material = new THREE.MeshStandardMaterial({ color: 0x04AA6D });
const cube = new THREE.Mesh(geometry, material);
scene.add(cube);

camera.position.z = 5;
Three.js simplifies 3D graphics that would require hundreds of lines in raw WebGL.
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Test Yourself With Exercise

+15 XP

Which shader in the WebGL pipeline is responsible for computing the final color of each individual rasterized pixel?