WebGL Fundamentals

Learn the core concepts and setup needed to start working with WebGL.

🚀 Start Coding

What is WebGL?

Core Definition

  • • JavaScript API for GPU-accelerated graphics
  • • Works directly with GPU without plugins
  • • Based on OpenGL ES 2.0/3.0 standards

Key Capabilities

  • • 2D/3D rendering directly in browsers
  • • Custom shader creation
  • • Hardware acceleration of graphics

Getting Started with WebGL

Setup: HTML5 Canvas

<canvas id="basic-canvas" width="800" height="600"></canvas>

<script>
const canvas = document.getElementById('basic-canvas');
const gl = canvas.getContext('webgl2');
if (!gl) {
    alert("WebGL2 not supported in this browser!");
}
</script>

Your First WebGL Code

// Clear screen
gl.clearColor(0.1, 0.1, 0.1, 1.0);
gl.clear(gl.COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | gl.DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT);

Core Concepts

Vertex Shaders

attribute vec4 a_position;
void main() {
    gl_Position = a_position;
}

Fragment Shaders

void main() {
    gl_FragColor = vec4(1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 1.0);
}

TheRendering Pipeline

Pipeline Overview

  1. 1 Define geometry in code
  2. 2 Vertex shader processes each vertex
  3. 3 Primitive assembly and rasterization
  4. 4 Fragment shader colors each pixel
  5. 5 Final output to display

Next Steps

Transformations

Master 3D space with matrix operations and coordinate systems

Shaders

Learn GLSL and create custom visual effects

3D Models

Load and render glTF/obj 3D formats