fragment-shader
• /classes/Shader.ts
– A lightweight & highly performant WebGL fragment shader renderer written in TypeScript.
- Appx.
3kb
(gzipped). - 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
Shader.ts
section for details on all default behaviors).
• /classes/Editor.ts
– A live, in-browser GLSL code editor implemented with Codemirror, synced with an instance of Shader.ts
.
- Appx.
165kb
(gzipped). - Live rendering! Shader re-renders on every keystroke.
- Smart syntax highlighting and bracket matching.
- Realtime autocomplete surfaces GLSL keywords, uniform names & more as you write your shader.
- Shader compilation errors surface in the editor on relevant lines.
ShaderToy
support! Paste your favorite shaders into the editor (work in progress).
Installation ( NPM )
npm install --save fragment-shader
To begin let's look at the core renderer, found in /classes/Shader.ts
.
Shader.ts
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.
Bare Bones Implementation
import { Shader } from 'fragment-shader';
const 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:
shader.stop();
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. The object's shape (and its default values) look like this:
import { Shader, type ShaderConfig } from 'fragment-shader';
const config: ShaderConfig = {
shader: `
void main () {
gl_FragColor = vec4(.8, .2, .7, 1.);
}
`,
target: document.body,
uniforms: [],
width: window.innerWidth,
height: window.innerHeight,
dpr: window.devicePixelRatio,
fillViewport: true,
onSuccess: () => {},
onError: () => {},
animate: true,
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, type ShaderConfig } from 'fragment-shader';
const config: ShaderConfig = { ... }
const shader = new Shader( `
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, type ShaderConfig } from 'fragment-shader';
const config: ShaderConfig = {
shader: `
void main () {
gl_FragColor = vec4(.8, .2, .7, 1.);
}
`,
animate: false,
};
const shader = new Shader(config);
const tick = (now: DOMHighResTimeStamp) => {
requestAnimationFrame(tick);
shader.tick(now);
};
requestAnimationFrame(tick);
Now that we can easily render shaders in the browser, let's experiment with authoring them too!
Editor.ts
Instantiating an Editor
should feel familiar after working with the Shader
class:
import { Editor } from 'fragment-shader';
const glsl = `
void main () {
gl_FragColor = vec4(.8, .2, .7, 1.);
}
`;
const editor = new Editor(glsl);
( More documentation coming soon! )