better-vanta

Vanta JS

View demo gallery & customize effects at www.vantajs.com →

What is Vanta? / FAQs

• Add 3D animated digital art to any webpage with just a few lines of code.
• How it works: Vanta inserts an animated effect as a background into any HTML element.
• Works with vanilla JS, React, Angular, Vue, etc.
• Effects are rendered by three.js (using WebGL) or p5.js.
• Effects can interact with mouse/touch inputs.
• Effect parameters (e.g. color) can be easily modified to match your brand.
• Total additional file size is ~120kb minified and gzipped (mostly three.js), which is smaller than comparable background images/videos.
• Vanta includes many predefined effects to try out. More effects will be added soon!

View demo gallery & customize effects at www.vantajs.com →

Basic usage with script tags:

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/three.js/r121/three.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/vanta@0.5.21/dist/vanta.waves.min.js"></script>
<script>
  VANTA.WAVES('#my-background')
</script>

View fiddle →

More options:

VANTA.WAVES({
  el: '#my-background', // element selector string or DOM object reference
  color: 0x000000,
  waveHeight: 20,
  shininess: 50,
  waveSpeed: 1.5,
  zoom: 0.75
})

• el: The container element.

  • The Vanta canvas will be appended as a child of this element, and will assume the width and height of this element. (If you want a fullscreen canvas, make sure this container element is fullscreen.)
  • This container can have other children. The other children will appear as foreground content, in front of the Vanta canvas.

• mouseControls: (defaults to true) Set to false to disable mouse controls. Only applies to certain effects.

• touchControls: (defaults to true) Set to false to disable touch controls. Only applies to certain effects.

• gyroControls: (defaults to false) Set to true to allow gyroscope to imitate mouse. Only applies to certain effects.

• NOTE: Each effect has its own specific parameters. Explore them all at www.vantajs.com!

Updating options after init:

const effect = VANTA.WAVES({
  el: '#my-background',
  color: 0x000000
})

// Later, when you want to update an animation in progress with new options
effect.setOptions({
  color: 0xff88cc
})

// Later, if the container changes size and you want to force Vanta to redraw at the new canvas size
effect.resize()

Cleanup:

const effect = VANTA.WAVES('#my-background')
effect.destroy() // e.g. call this in React's componentWillUnmount

Usage with React:

npm i vanta, then import a specific effect as follows. Make sure three.js or p5.js has already been included via <script> tag.

import React from 'react'
import BIRDS from 'vanta/dist/vanta.birds.min'
// Make sure window.THREE is defined, e.g. by including three.min.js in the document head using a <script> tag

class MyComponent extends React.Component {
  constructor() {
    super()
    this.vantaRef = React.createRef()
  }
  componentDidMount() {
    this.vantaEffect = BIRDS({
      el: this.vantaRef.current
    })
  }
  componentWillUnmount() {
    if (this.vantaEffect) this.vantaEffect.destroy()
  }
  render() {
    return <div ref={this.vantaRef}>
      Foreground content goes here
    </div>
  }
}

View fiddle →

Usage with React Hooks (requires React 16.8):

import React, { useState, useEffect, useRef } from 'react'
import BIRDS from 'vanta/dist/vanta.birds.min'
// Make sure window.THREE is defined, e.g. by including three.min.js in the document head using a <script> tag

const MyComponent = (props) => {
  const [vantaEffect, setVantaEffect] = useState(0)
  const myRef = useRef(null)
  useEffect(() => {
    if (!vantaEffect) {
      setVantaEffect(BIRDS({
        el: myRef.current
      }))
    }
    return () => {
      if (vantaEffect) vantaEffect.destroy()
    }
  }, [vantaEffect])
  return <div ref={myRef}>
    Foreground content goes here
  </div>
}

Usage with Vue 2 (SFC):

<template>
  <div ref='vantaRef'>
    Foreground content here
  </div>
</template>

<script>
import BIRDS from 'vanta/src/vanta.birds'
// Make sure window.THREE is defined, e.g. by including three.min.js in the document head using a <script> tag

export default {
  mounted() {
    this.vantaEffect = BIRDS({
      el: this.$refs.vantaRef
    })
  },
  beforeDestroy() {
    if (this.vantaEffect) {
      this.vantaEffect.destroy()
    }
  }
}
</script>

Using THREE or p5 from npm

For effects that use three.js, you can import three from npm, and pass it into the effect function.

import React from 'react'
import * as THREE from 'three'
import BIRDS from 'vanta/dist/vanta.birds.min'

...
  componentDidMount() {
    this.vantaEffect = BIRDS({
      el: this.vantaRef.current,
      THREE: THREE // use a custom THREE when initializing
    })
  }
...

For effects that use p5.js, you can import p5 from npm, and pass it into the effect function.

import React from 'react'
import p5 from 'p5'
import TRUNK from 'vanta/dist/vanta.trunk.min'

...
  componentDidMount() {
    this.vantaEffect = TRUNK({
      el: this.vantaRef.current,
      p5: p5 // use a custom p5 when initializing
    })
  }
...

Local dev:

Clone the repo, switch to the gallery branch, run npm install and npm run dev, and go to localhost:8080.

Credits

• General inspiration from shadertoy.com, #generative, /r/generative, /r/creativecoding, etc

• Birds effect from https://threejs.org/examples/?q=birds#webgl_gpgpu_birds by @zz85

• Fog effect from https://thebookofshaders.com/13/ by @patriciogonzalezvivo

• Clouds effect from https://www.shadertoy.com/view/XslGRr by Inigo Quilez

• Clouds2 effect from https://www.shadertoy.com/view/lsBfDz by Rune Stubbe

• Trunk, Topology effects from http://generated.space/ by Kjetil Midtgarden Golid @kgolid