GLGE is a javascript library intended to ease the use of WebGL; which is
basically a native browser javascript API giving direct access to openGL
ES2, allowing for the use of hardware accelerated 2D/3D applications
without having to download any plugins.
The aim of GLGE is to mask the involved nature of WebGL from the web
developer, who can then spend his/her time creating richer content for
the web.
Not one or two but three demos this time. I’ve spent a little bit of time pulling togther code thats been hanging around for a while resulting in a number of new features. In addition, thanks to an excellent suggestion from Dennis Ippel I’ve added the ability to chain commands in the API eg:
Taking it one step further I’ve also added a quick notatation so you need even less code, so the example above can be written as:
myGroup._({LocX:10,LocY:10},object1,object2);
As well as that I’ve also got GLGE working in the latest nightlies of chromium and firefox, I’ve not been able to check webkit so shout if there is an issue. Be warned this may have broken things in older browsers
2D Filters
GLGE now has the ability to apply 2D post processing filters to 3D scene, at the moment you need to write them in GLSL but I will try and build some common ones in(blur,dof,SSAO,bloom etc) before the next release. I’ve put together a demo terrain with some God rays and DOF:
GLGE can now apply a video as a texture, although the webgl video texture option seems to still be missing in webkit I’ve worked around it for now by taking the video via the canvas so it should work cross browser. Although the demo is only using ogg theora so I’m not sure about safari?.
As well as video GLGE can now display 2D canvas as a texture, in addition I’ve added texture coordinates to the ray query so you can interact with the canvas as you would normally. The demo below demostrates this by allowing you to draw onto the canvas that is being mapped to the cube.
I’ve finally got round to pulling stuff together for a well overdue release. Since this one is so late I’ve skipped a couple of versions as an indication of how much has been done since v0.2.
Some of the new features:
Environment Mapping
Bounding Volumes
Render to Texture, with built in oblique near-plane clipping, for reflections and refractions
Collada Animation support
Completely re-done skeletal animation; there is no longer a limit on the number of bones.
A new particle system
There is also experimental soft shadow support.
You may have noticed that the original GLGE animated man disapeared a little while ago. Unfortunately he doesn’t work in the new system and I seem to have lost the original blend file, so I don’t think I’ll be able to bring him back ; I have however done a completely new test man with animations. As always I’ve had to rush the modeling and animation to get it done – one of these days I’ll spend some proper time on the arty side of things
Anyway I’ve used the new man in a simple platform game. It’s still very buggy as I’ve not sorted out proper physics yet but it shows off v0.5 quite well:
If you’re intrested I’ve made the blend files for this one available with the export script, which still needs a little manual intevention, but it’s getting there slowly. Download:
So, I’ve been a bit busy/lazy of late with regard to GLGE but I’ve doing a bit of work on something different. A physics demo in javascript using GLGE. When I started there where no 3D physics libraries for javascript. I knew I wouldn’t have time to write one from scratch, but I had played with jiglibflash a bit in the past so I decided it was time for a port.
At this point I have to say the jiglibflash guys have an amazing library and have done a fantastic job porting the original over to flash, which made getting it into javascript that much easier.
I’m happy to say that the port went faster and better then I was anticipating. The simlarlarities between JS and AS3 ment I didn’t have to spend too much time messing about with syntax. At the moment it’s not working quite right in vanilla GLGE but I’ll be fixing that shortly, in the mean time I’ve hacked a bit and there is a little demo up at:
Hopefully, this will be usefull for people working with all the webgl frameworks and libraries and not just GLGE. I’ve intentially not hooked anything directly into GLGE so it should be just as easy for people to get physics working with c3dl, cubicvr, energizeGL, O3D, sceneJS, spidergl, webglu,…. or even use it directly with raw webgl. The code is now available at:
GLGE now has a render to texture feature within the material system. In addition to rendering to texture GLGE also has common transforms built-in which allows you to create complex effects such as water with only a few lines of mark up. I’ve put together a demo showing how to achieve a water effect with reflections and refractions. The interesting part is that to define the material only took a few lines of XML:
Although this demo show water many other effects can be achieved, reflections on floors mirrors etc. Hopefully it will also allow for portals between scenes shortly, but is currently limited to cameras in the same scene. This feature is not currently working in firefox and you will need a nightly of a webkit browser to view the demo since the RTT is using the DEPTH_STENCIL_ATTACHMENT which has yet to make it into firefox, fingers crossed it won’t be long!
GLGE now has a couple of key features that have been missing up to now. The new particle system isn’t as comprahensive as I would like yet so there will no doubt be more update in the coming months, but it should be okay to prduce a vast range of effects.
In addition to particles I’ve also managed to add cube mapping to GLGE the result is that you can now specify environment maps very easily withing GLGE with just a couple of lines of XML:
I’ve put together a simple demo of environment mapping using the traditional teapot.
A collada animation and skining demo is coming soon much of the skeletal animation in GLGE has been rewritten in the last few weeks. But given googles recent quake port I though I’d put it off for a bit. Instead I spent a couple of days putting something together to demonstrate collition detection in GLGE. I’ve imported a level from Nexuiz into GLGE. I’ve not had time for some of the niceties such as shadow maps hopefully I’ll do a fuller demo soon. In the mean time play the live demo here(remember you’ll need a webgl enabled browser):
As you may now be aware I’m not very good at drawing a line and issuing a release; there always seems too much left to do. So, I’ve been killing as many bugs as possible the last couple of weeks and fixing shader issues, adding parallax mapping and I can now say that GLGE v0.2 is go. Since the last release there have been a lot of new additions, including:
shadow
collada support
gpu picking
fog
text rendering
parrallax mapping
and many optimizations
I’ve put together a little demo showing off some of the new features; it’s quite large so may take awhile to load on slower connections. I wanted to do something a little more involved but I think that will have to wait for the next release:
I’m back now and fully back in to the swing of things. While I’ve been gone others have been busy, checkout this excellent brain visualization created by Phil Mercurio using GLGE, very impressive and very high poly:
I’m running a little behind schedule on GLGE at the moment but I’ve managed to get native COLLADA support working. The addition of COLLADA meant adding of a couple of other very useful new features to the core api. GLGE now has multimaterial support and also a new group class to allow for transform hierarchies(very useful for animation, and hopefully culling on larger scenes).
The COLLADA support is still a work in progress, there is no animation yet, and it’s not 100% reliable, but it’s on it’s way. I’ve put together a small demo with a few models from www.collada.org:
View Demo – Remember you need a webGL enabled Browser
Video
Version 0.2 of GLGE is coming soon I just want to iron out some bugs and tidy things and maybe include do a demo to showcase the features added since 0.1.
This weeks big new feature is the addition of text rendering. I’ve also added a billboard option that will point the z-axis of any object towards the camera or any other object.
There has also been lots of changes behind the scenes. The animation system has been fixed and improved. It’s now posible to animate using linear intoperlation(finally) as well as animate discrete steps and set non-numeric values. This may well be the last big update for the next couple of weeks as I’m off on a family holiday next weekend.
I’ve finally added the long promised fog. As it was a quick and easy addition, I’ve also done a lot of optimisations including replacing Sylvester with GLGE optimised math functions. Guesstimate is that performance gains this week are ~20%. I was hoping to add some frustum culling of objects as well but there just aren’t enough hours in the day, but I’m sure I’ll get it done soon. Hopefully, I’ll be getting the animation system up to scratch this coming week.
