Learning WebGL

Tons of links this time!

• Some gorgeous demos from AlteredQualia, showing off the WebGL-enabled three.js: a converted Wavefront .obj file, two lighting examples (the second one’s particularly pretty), some nice smooth Blinn-Phong shading, some cars, cubemaps (and also). This three.js cubemap demo is also very cool.
• Some discussion of picking — that is, mouse selection of 3D objects in a scene — by john and Colin MacKenzie. There are two techniques, ray intersection (using JavaScript to work out which object has been clicked) and GPU picking (doing it on the graphics hardware with an extra rendering pass). Both approaches have pros and cons; here’s john’s side-by-side example of both, while Colin uses ray intersection in this demo and GPU picking in this one.
• A big announcement from KataLabs: KataSpace, a 3D world where people can interact. Second Life should be watching their backs…
• News from the Firefox team: ANGLE is now the default rendering path for Minefield nightly builds; it looks like this will be the default behaviour in the final version of Firefox 4.
• Don’t forget that WebGL Camp II is coming on 14 December; speakers from EvoGrid, SRI, X3DOM, Stanford Computer Science, Katalabs, the Google Chrome 3D Team — and I believe Lindsay Kay of SceneJS will be talking too.
• Debugging WebGL can be very hard; Ben Vanik’s WebGL Inspector aims to make it much easier, and looks very promising.
• Lots of promise here: Denny Koch has hooked up Kinect input to the EnergizeGL WebGL framework. No live demo yet, but here’s a video. He’s also released a new version of EnergizeGL, with render-to-texture support.
• …which is obviously the must-have feature for WebGL frameworks today, as SceneJS has also just gained it.
• From Colin MacKenzie, a very impressive shooter game — written in 24 hours!
• Want to know how fast your WebGL browser is? Try Thatcher Ulrich’s WebGL benchmark.
• Some cool demos from Hakim El Hattab: shiny objects (click to create some), bacteria (ditto).
• And some more from Evgeny Demidov — this fluid dynamics demo is particularly cool, as is this animated Mandelbrot set.
• A thoughtful article comparing the chances of WebGL and Adobe’s upcoming Molehill from Stephen Shankland.
• Some tutorials for the WebGLU framework: getting started, building a videosphere.
• …and two for the WebGLet framework: part 1, part 2.
• A pretty page-curl effect from Sebastian Markbåge, along with some interesting thoughts on WebGL and non-3D uses for it.
• From Zexx, some cool cubemap panoramas (I think using Copperlicht).
• I was sure I’d linked to this before, but can’t find it now: the WebGL Shader Lab, an IDE for shaders in the browser.
• I’ve not managed to get this one to work, but it certainly sounds impressive: the Bullet library, compiled to JavaScript and animating WebGL (via Brian in the comments)
• If 100 people sign this petition, pyro will start a company to develop a WebGL game.