promin04 / gl-react

[gl-react v3 alpha] – a React library to write and compose WebGL shaders

NB: This is gl-react v3. For gl-react v2, please see ProjectSeptemberInc/gl-react.

gre/gl-react repository is a complete rewrite of ProjectSeptemberInc/gl-react library (gl-react v2). It plans to be the gl-react v3. We keep both repository at same time because (1) this work is not yet finished and (2) this repository is now a "multi libraries" repository (it's just easier to maintain that way).

See also this article: http://greweb.me/2016/12/gl-react-v3/ .

v3 alpha: development in progress

• gl-react, universal implementation
• gl-react-dom, DOM implementation
• gl-react-headless, Node.js implementation
  • tests: 100% test coverage!
• gl-react-exponent, React Native via Exponent implementation
• gl-react-native, React Native standalone implementation

The main remaining work of v3 is the React Native implementation:

We are relying on Exponent's GLView to implement the WebGL layer. The implementation is still very young and experimental (only implement a subset of WebGL), but as soon as this implementation guarantees a good conformance, the library should just work! I encourage everyone to contribute to make Exponent WebGL implementation robust, independently from the library you use at the end (Three.js / Pixi.js / regl / gl-react / whatever!).

To track the status of React Native implementation, please see gre#74

---

gl-react

gl-react is a React library to write and compose WebGL shaders. Implement complex effects by composing React components.

This universal library must be coupled with one of the concrete implementations:

• gl-react-dom for React DOM (web using WebGL).
• unfinished gl-react-native for React Native (iOS/Android via OpenGL).
• gl-react-headless for Node.js (used for testing for now)

Links

• Cookbook, examples, API
• 

References

• GLSL spec
• 'the books of shaders'
• shader-school workshop

Gist

import React from "react";
import { Shaders, Node, GLSL } from "gl-react";
const shaders = Shaders.create({
  helloBlue: {
    frag: GLSL`
precision highp float;
varying vec2 uv;
uniform float blue;
void main() {
  gl_FragColor = vec4(uv.x, uv.y, blue, 1.0);
}`
  }
});
class HelloBlue extends React.Component {
  render() {
    const { blue } = this.props;
    return <Node
      shader={shaders.helloBlue}
      uniforms={{ blue }}
    />;
  }
}

import the correct implementation,

import {Surface} from "gl-react-dom"; // for React DOM
import {Surface} from "gl-react-exponrnt"; // for React Native via Exponent GLView
import {Surface} from "gl-react-native"; // for React Native
import {Surface} from "gl-react-headless"; // for Node.js!

and this code...

<Surface width={300} height={300}>
  <HelloBlue blue={0.5} />
</Surface>

...renders:

Features

• React, VDOM and immutable paradigm: OpenGL is a low level imperative and mutable API. This library takes the best of it and exposes it in an immutable, descriptive way with React.
• React lifecycle allows partial GL re-rendering. Only a React Component update will trigger a redraw. Each Node holds a framebuffer state that get redrawn when component updates and schedule a Surface reflow.
• Developer experience
  • React DevTools works like on DOM and allows you to inspect and debug your stack of effects.
• Uniform bindings: bindings from JavaScript objects to OpenGL GLSL language types (bool, int, float, vec2, vec3, vec4, mat2, mat3, mat4, sampler2D...)
• An extensible texture loader that allows to support any content that goes in the shader as a sampler2D texture.
  • support for images
  • support for videos (currently gl-react-dom)
  • support for canvas (gl-react-dom)
• flowtype support.
• headless tests with Jest. We have reached 99.9% test coverage!
• Modular, Composable, Sharable. Write shaders once into components that you re-use everywhere! At the end, users don't need to write shaders.

Atom nice GLSL highlighting

If you are using Atom Editor, you can have JS inlined GLSL syntax highlighted.

To configure this:

• add language-babel package.
• Configure language-babel to add GLSL:source.glsl in settings "JavaScript Tagged Template Literal Grammar Extensions".
• (Bonus) Add this CSS to your Atom > Stylesheet:

/* language-babel blocks */
atom-text-editor::shadow .line .ttl-grammar {
  /* NB: designed for dark theme. can be customized */
  background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.3);
}
atom-text-editor::shadow .line .ttl-grammar:first-child:last-child {
  display: block; /* force background to take full width only if ttl-grammar is alone in the line. */
}