Game Development with Three.js: With Three.js you can create sophisticated 3D games that run in the web browser. This book is aimed at both the professional game designer and the enthusiast with a step by step approach including lots of tips and examples.

Isaac Sukin

$17.98 ~~$19.99~~

4.4 (10 Ratings)

eBook Oct 2013 118 pages 1st Edition

Isaac Sukin

$17.98 ~~$19.99~~

4.4 (10 Ratings)

eBook Oct 2013 118 pages 1st Edition

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Game Development with Three.js

Chapter 2. Building a World

This chapter explains the components of a Three.js scene in detail, including the different kinds of renderers, geometries, materials, and lighting. We will also build a procedurally generated city.

Geometries

Geometries are instances of THREE.Geometry that define the shape of an object in a scene. They are made up of vertices and faces (which are themselves objects and are accessible through the vertices and faces array properties). Vertices are the THREE.Vector3 objects representing points in three-dimensional space, while faces are the THREE.Face3 objects representing triangular surfaces. (All more complex shapes are subdivided into triangular faces for rendering purposes.)

Luckily, dealing with vertices and faces directly is usually unnecessary because THREE.Geometry has many subclasses that help create commonly used shapes.

3D primitives

Three.js provides a number of classes that generate common shapes. The official documentation for each type is available at http://threejs.org/docs/, but a summary of common types is shown in the following table (some obscure, optional constructor parameters were omitted):

Type	Constructor	Description
Cube	THREE.CubeGeometry(width, height, depth...

Materials

Materials are instances of THREE.Material that define how objects appear. There are several common material subclasses:

Constructor	Explanation
`MeshBasicMaterial`	It is not affected by lighting (a characteristic called unlit), so this is usually used to display a solid color or a wireframe. Two adjacent, same-colored, unlit surfaces are difficult to tell apart.
`MeshNormalMaterial`	The red/green/blue values of the colors displayed by this material are based on the magnitude of the x/y/z values of the faces' normal vectors. (A normal vector is perpendicular to a surface.) This material is unlit and useful for quickly distinguishing the shape of an object.
`MeshDepthMaterial`	It is an unlit material that shows shades of gray, with brightness depending on the distance from the camera. It is useful when designing scenes before applying more realistic textures.
`MeshLambertMaterial`	Faces are affected by lighting, but are not shiny. Specifically, lighting is calculated per-vertex...

Lighting

Lights are instances of THREE.Light that affect how the MeshLambertMaterial and MeshPhongMaterial surfaces are illuminated. Most lights have color (specified in hexadecimal notation like CSS colors) and intensity (a decimal value, usually between zero and one, indicating how bright the light should be). There are different kinds of lights as shown in the following table:

Type	Constructor	Description
Ambient	THREE.AmbientLight(color)	It affects all lit objects in the scene equally.
Directional	THREE.DirectionalLight(color, intensity = 1)	For this type, all light is parallel and comes from a given direction, as if the source was very far away.
Hemisphere	THREE.HemisphereLight(skyColor, groundColor, intensity = 1)	It simulates refractive lighting from the sun, sort of like two opposing directional lights.
Point	THREE.PointLight(color, intensity = 1, radius = 0)	It emanates from a specific point in space, like a lightbulb. It illuminates only objects within `radius`.
Spot	...

Key benefits

Develop immersive 3D games that anyone can play on the Internet
Learn Three.js from a gaming perspective, including everything you need to build beautiful and high-performance worlds
A step-by-step guide filled with game-focused examples and tips

Description

The advent of WebGL and its inclusion in many browsers enabled JavaScript programs running in a web browser to access the GPU without a plugin or extension. Three.js is a next generation high-level library that makes it possible to author complex 3D computer animations that display in the browser using nothing more than a simple text editor. The development of these new tools has opened up the world of real-time 3D computer animations to a far broader spectrum of developers. Starting with how to build 3D games on the web using the Three.js graphics library, you will learn how to build 3D worlds with meshes, lighting, user interaction, physics, and more. Along the way, you'll learn how to build great online games through fun examples. Use this book as a guide to embrace the next generation of game development! Moving on from the basics, you will learn how to use Three.js to build game worlds using its core components, including renderers, geometries, materials, lighting, cameras, and scenes. Following on from this, you will learn how to work with mouse and keyboard interactions, incorporate game physics, and import custom models and animations. You will also learn how to include effects like particles, sounds, and post-processing. You will start by building a 3D world, and then create a first person shooter game using it. You will then be shown how to imbue this FPS game with a ‚Äúcapture the flag‚Äù gameplay objective. With Game Development with Three.js, you will be able to build 3D games on the Web using the Three.js graphics library.

Who is this book for?

This book is for people interested in programming 3D games for the Web. Readers are expected to have basic knowledge of JavaScript syntax and a basic understanding of HTML and CSS. This book will be useful regardless of prior experience with game programming, whether you intend to build casual side projects or large-scale professional titles.

What you will learn

Set up a Three.js scene representing a game world
Understand the types of Three.js components, including geometries, materials, lighting, cameras, and renderers
Interact with your games using the mouse and keyboard
Structure your worlds with various approaches to physical collision
Construct complex levels using several different methods
Extend the Three.js framework with custom game-specific classes
Gain insight into development processes and important design and performance considerations for web games
Achieve a basic understanding of multiplayer game networking

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claudio daffra Jan 17, 2014

ti fornisce le basi , chiare per poter iniziare a districarsi nel labirinto del 3d. L'ho trovato piuttosto utile in quanto attraverso un esempio completo ti permette presto di ottenere risultati

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David McLure Jul 13, 2014

Great summary of the technology! Works well as a follow-on book to the book named"Learning Three.js: The JavaScript 3D Library for WebGL" by Jos Dirksen

Game Reviews Nov 21, 2013

This is an excellent book on 3D game programming for web browsers. It is a quick read (97 pages) and has many examples to help get you started. You also can download example code from an associated website so you can learn from the example code and get a head start. The book is well written and is an easy read. Somehow it also manages to cover an amazing range of complex topics including various methods of world generation, particle systems, 3D sound, optimization, networking/multiplayer, and even anticheating. Highly recommended!

Kindle Customer Feb 04, 2015

The author's book was extremely helpful! I'm now sold on using javascript with three.js for game development. I think this is going to be essential knowledge, but as of now it's cutting edge. Fun stuff.

Maximilian Friedmann Feb 20, 2014

Das Buch erklärt alles nötige in angenehmer Geschwindigkeit. Das erlernte Codebeispiel macht Lust auf mehr und bietet ebenfalls einen guten Start für eigene Projekte. Ist das Geld vollkommen wert!!!

Game Development with Three.js: With Three.js you can create sophisticated 3D games that run in the web browser. This book is aimed at both the professional game designer and the enthusiast with a step by step approach including lots of tips and examples.

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Game Development with Three.js

Chapter 2. Building a World

Geometries

3D primitives

Materials

A city scene

Lighting

Renderers

Summary

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