WebGL for Node.js

This is a part of Node3D project.

npm i webgl-raub

Synopsis

Node.js addon with WebGL bindings.

Note: this addon uses N-API, and therefore is ABI-compatible across different Node.js versions. Addon binaries are precompiled and there is no compilation step during the npm i command.

This module does not provide a window control system, and it can not set up an OpenGL context on its own. This API simply maps the native OpenGL function calls to their JS counterpart.

TL;DR: see 3d-core-raub for a quick start in a fully sufficient environment.

Usage

const webgl = require('webgl-raub');

Here webgl contains all the WebGL API, like a WebGLRenderingContext instance would. See WebGLRenderingContext docs.

To use browser WebGL libs, like three.js, several additional interfaces must also be provided to mimic the browser.

There is node-glfw module, which solves both window handling and additional browser-like interfaces. It is also bundled into the 3d-core-raub module, for that matter.

const webgl = require('webgl-raub');
const { Document } = require('glfw-raub');

Document.setWebgl(webgl); // plug this WebGL impl into the Document

const doc = new Document();
global.document = global.window = doc;

const canvas = document.createElement('canvas'); // === doc
const gl = canvas.getContext('webgl'); // === webgl

OSX Note: some features may depend on OpenGL profile being used. Core profile is necessary for VAO and other OpenGL 3.2+ features. Depending on your windowing backend, set the OpenGL profile of your preference. In case glfw-raub is used, the profile can be set through the Window/Document constructor or with glfw.windowHint calls.

Three.js

Being a low level interface, WebGL requires a lot of effort to build apps. For that matter there are numerous frameworks around it. One of them is three.js. It is known to work well on Node.js with this implementation of WebGL.

You can try to use three.js your own way, but there is a far better option: node-3d-core, which gets you two steps ahead for free.