vfx-composer

Warning

This library is (extremely!) work-in-progress; meaning that it is not done, or ready for use in any other capacity. Please don't use this and assume that anything will work; it probably won't. And when you find something that does work, be ready for it to break in the next release. Please don't open Issues or PRs for things that are broken; I am most likely aware of them. Use this library at your own risk.

If you're interested in using this library and want to keep up to date, please follow me on Twitter, and/or click the Watch button for this repository.

Introduction 👋

VFX Composer is a visual effects library for Three.js and @react-three/fiber (through the vfx-composer-r3f package.) It allows you to build complex visual effects in a declarative way, compiling them into shaders using the Shader Composer library. All your VFX execute on the GPU.

VFX Composer's main exports are:

Particles 🎆

A highly optimized particle system engine based on THREE.InstancedMesh. It can use any geometry for its particles, and is typically coupled with a VFXMaterial instance that will animate them.

VFXMaterial 🎨

A custom material that can be used to render a visual effect. It accepts a list of effect modules which are compiled into a single shader. VFXMaterial happily extends Three's built-in materials, from THREE.ShaderMaterial to THREE.MeshPhysicalMaterial, and can even inject its shaders into materials loaded from eg. GLTF files.

A Library of Effect Modules 🎁

Effect modules are functions that transform positions, colors, opacity and other attributes. They can be chained toegther to create complex effects, and make use of Shader Composer to compile a complete effect into a single shader. VFX Composer provides a library of immediately usable effect modules, but you can also implement your own.

Examples & Demos 🎓

• Official Examples Suite

How this Library Works 🥳

Hacking & Development 🏗

Clone this repository and run:

yarn && yarn examples

Alternatively, you can launch the examples app on StackBlitz, or just view them on Vercel.

Resources

A couple of links to (possibly free) resources that will help you build cool visual effects.

• Kenney's Particle Pack
• Kenney's Smoke Particles
• Unity's Free VFX Flipbooks

Questions? 💬

Find me on Twitter or the Poimandres Discord.

License

Copyright (c) 2022 Hendrik Mans

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
"Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE
LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION
OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION
WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.