polygonjs VS Spector.js

That's the path I took with Polygonjs ( https://polygonjs.com ), and a game I've just released ( https://polyreplay.com/minesweepertwist ), with more coming shortly.

But it didn't start like that. It only started as a tool I could use to deliver client projects, as I was trying to become a freelance for interactive 3D scenes for the web.

Project after project ( some examples here: https://polygon-lab.com/ ), I could improve Polygonjs. Then I found clients who would be interested enough to buy licenses, and would give valuable feedback which would help the project grow even more.

And a few clients asking for not just interactive sites, but also games. This pushed Polygonjs further, and after several games released, it definitely qualifies as a game engine.

So this is generally an advice I give to people who want to become freelancers. Build a tool that solves a problem in your space, as this gives you an edge, and you'll also get the chance to confront that tool to reality, which will help it - and you - grow. This becomes a virtuous circle very quickly.

You can have a look how I do it in Polygonjs (which is a node-based design tool based on threejs), in this example scene.

If you're familiar with Houdini, I invite you to try Polygonjs, which is based on threejs and inspired by Houdini. You can basically build threejs in a procedural way, with just nodes.

You could try Polygonjs. It's inspired by Houdini, so has a lot in common with TouchDesigner (it's fully node-based, you can create audio reactive apps), and it works on the web, which makes scenes very easy to share.

Can I invite you to try Polygonjs as well?

you can generate an SDF from a mesh with [Polygonjs](https://polygonjs.com). Here is an [example scene](https://polygonjs.com/examples/bynode:mat:raymarchingbuilder...).

It won't generate a function, though. Instead it creates a 3D texture which is used inside the raymarching material. In my experience this is much more performant, and also art-directable.

(disclaimer, I'm building Polygonjs)

It sounds like you need a dynamic system that runs in the browser. Maybe try Polygonjs ( https://polygonjs.com )? The the 3rd interactive scene on the front page gives an idea of a dynamic model. I run it, if that of interest, happy to give more examples

If you ever wanted to do a vegetation modelling tool for the web, I invite you to try it on Polygonjs, it has a lot of similarities with Houdini (node-based, procedural modeling, HDA system, etc) and is all web/realtime. And open source.

This is extremely interesting: https://github.com/polygonjs/polygonjs/blob/master/src/engine/nodes/cop/SDFBlur.ts uses a 3D construct and implements the blur using a fixed matrix.

Author of the WebGL volume rendering tutorial [0] you mentioned in the readme here, great work!

Working in WebGL/JS is nice since you can deploy it everywhere, but it can be really hard for graphics programming as you've found because there are very few tools for doing real GPU/graphics debugging for WebGL. The only one I know of is [1], and I've had limited success with it.

WebGPU is a great next step, it provides a modern GPU API (so if you want to learn Metal, DX12, Vulkan, they're more familiar), and modern GPU functionality like storage buffers and compute shaders, not to mention lower overhead and better performance. The WebGPU inspector [2] also looks to provide a GPU profiler/debugger for web that aims to be on par with native options. I just tried it out on a small project I have and it looks really useful. Another benefit of WebGPU is that it maps more clearly to Metal/DX12/Vulkan, so you can use native tools to profile it through Chrome [3].

I think it would be worth learning C++ and a native graphics API, you'll get access to the much more powerful graphics debugging & profiling features provided by native tools (PIX, RenderDoc, Nvidia Nsight, Xcode, etc.) and functionality beyond what even WebGPU exposes.

Personally, I have come "full circle": I started with C++ and OpenGL, then DX12/Vulkan/Metal, then started doing more WebGL/WebGPU and JS/TS to "run everywhere", and now I'm back writing C++ but using WebGL/WebGPU and compiling to WebAssembly to still everywhere (and native for tools).

With WebGPU, you could program in C++ (or Rust) and compile to both native (for access to debuggers and tools), and Wasm (for wide deployment on the web). This is one of the aspects of WebGPU that is most exciting to me. There's a great tutorial on developing WebGPU w/ C++ [4], and a one on using it from JS/TS [5].

[0] https://www.willusher.io/webgl/2019/01/13/volume-rendering-w...

[1] https://spector.babylonjs.com/

[2] https://github.com/brendan-duncan/webgpu_inspector

[3] https://toji.dev/webgpu-profiling/pix

[4] https://eliemichel.github.io/LearnWebGPU/

[5] https://webgpufundamentals.org/

For debugging, spector.js helps sometimes.

If you want to know what the browser supports, webglreport.com will tell you. If you want to know what a specific page is using, https://spector.babylonjs.com/ can probably tell you. Alternatively, you can go into dev tools, select the canvas in the inspector, and run $0.getContext('webgl2') to see if it's webgl2 or not.

I'm actually not sure. Here is the implementation. The extension can capture single frames of WebGL animations, I think it's something to do with getting the timing of that frame (finding its start and end).