Smaller than 3kb.
Phenomal performance characteristics, both in rendering speed and in memory consumption.
Extremely minimal taxing of the garbage collector.
Certified jank-free – if your experience differs, please let me know!
Zero-configuration instantiation (see Hello World section for details on all default behaviors.

Installation ( NPM )

npm install --save fragment-shader

Hello World ( Default / Bare Bones Implementation )

Note: there are several plugins in modern IDEs (VSCode, etc.) that enable GLSL (shader language) syntax highlighting within template literals by prefacing them with /*glsl*/ – doesn't seem to work on GitHub though.

import { Shader } from 'fragment-shader';

const glsl = /*glsl*/ `
  void main () {
    gl_FragColor = vec4(.8, .2, .7, 1.);
  }
`;

const shader = new Shader(glsl);

The above code example instantiates an instance of the Shader class and passes it but a single paramter: a string containing your fragment shader code. By default, the Shader class will instantiate a <canvas> element and append it directly to the <body>. The <canvas> will then be sized to match the size of the browser window (and the display's pixel density). Given the default configuration value of fillViewport being true, An event listener is then created for the resize event on the browser window, allowing the renderer and its <canvas> to resize according to the browser window changing size or orientation. Then, after bootstrapping a webgl2 rendering context, it prepares all internals (including compiling your shader) before finally initializing an internal requestAnimationFrame loop, syncing the rendering animation to the native refresh rate of the display. There are two methods on the shader instance for controlling rendering playback:

// Cancel the `requestAnimationFrame` loop.
shader.stop();

// Resume the `requestAnimationFrame` loop.
shader.start();

Configured Implementation

If you wish for the renderer to behave differently than its default configuration, you can do so by passing the constructor a configuration object.

import { Shader } from 'fragment-shader';

const config: ShaderConfig = {
  shader: /*glsl*/ `
    void main () {
      gl_FragColor = vec4(.8, .2, .7, 1.);
    }
  `,
  target: document.body,
  uniforms: [],
  width: 800,
  height: 600,
  dpr: window.devicePixelRatio,
  fillViewport: false,
  onSuccess: () => {},
  onError: () => {},
  animate: false,
  debug: false,
};

const shader = new Shader(config);

Or, if you become accustomed to the shader being the first argument of the constructor, you can instantiate this way:

import { Shader } from 'fragment-shader';

const config: ShaderConfig = { ... }

const shader = new Shader(/*glsl*/ `
  void main () {
    gl_FragColor = vec4(.8, .2, .7, 1.);
  }
`, config);

Note If you set animate to false, the shader will render its initial frame, but from thereon out you will be responsible for calling the tick() method on the Shader if you wish to update it – for example, within a requestAnimationFrame loop.

import { Shader } from 'fragment-shader';

const shader = new Shader(
  /*glsl*/ `
  void main () {
    gl_FragColor = vec4(.8, .2, .7, 1.);
  }
`,
  { animate: false }
);

const tick = (now: DOMHighResTimeStamp) => {
  requestAnimationFrame(tick);
  shader.tick(now);
};

requestAnimationFrame(tick);

Keywords

WebGL

shader

renderer

FAQs

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Package last updated on 05 Jun 2023

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