HTML5 Canvas, 2nd Edition

WebGL JavaScript Libraries

At the start of this section, we promised to show you some libraries that can be used with WebGL to make it easier to develop applications. Here are some of the more interesting libraries and projects.

Google O3D

Google’s O3D library was once a browser plug-in, but has now been released as a standalone JavaScript library for WebGL. The examples of using O3D with JavaScript—including a fairly spectacular 3D pool game—are very impressive. O3D allows you to load COLLADA 3D models created with Google SketchUp (as well as other 3D packages).

The required code looks about as complex as straight WebGL code, so while this is very powerful, you might want to look at some of the other libraries here first if you are just starting out.

C3DL

The tagline for C3DL is “WebGL made easy!” C3DL, or “Canvas 3D JS Library,” is similar to GLGE, but it seems to have a head start thanks to a larger API and more support. This library also appears to be slanted toward games; a real-time strategy (RTS) and an arcade game are featured as its more prominent demos. The library supports COLLADA models, and the code also appears very straightforward to implement.

SpiderGL

“3D Graphics for Next-Generation WWW” is how SpiderGL bills itself to the world. This library appears to be very similar to GLGE and C3DL, except that the demos focus more on lighting, color, and textures than on games and applications. It also supports COLLADA models.

SceneJS

SceneJS is geared toward rendering 3D scenes built ...