Three.js Essentials

Three.js Essentials provides a starting point for anyone curious about how to leverage the WebGL standard using the Three.js JavaScript library. The book consists of seven detailed examples with explanations of how they work. Unfortunately, these explanations are light on detail, making the treatment of this subject somewhat superficial.It’s not necessarily bad to be superficial, however. Clearly, one advantage is that you quickly get introduced to some of the details so that you can get a taste for the level of difficulty involved in creating a moderately functional Three.js application.The bad news is that too many details get left out, leaving you wondering what’s hidden behind the curtain. For example, on page 79 the author states, “Note that we set the sortParticles property to true. You should always do this whenever you change the vertices (or the position of the vertices) of the system to make sure that they are rendered correctly and don’t result in weird overlapping artifacts.” There’s no other explanation. The author is essentially saying, “Just do this, or you’ll get weird results.” Unfortunately the book has too many of these kinds of statements, and one has to struggle to remember the rules without understanding the context or the underlying reasons.Despite its terseness, the book manages to present some examples that are nothing less than awesome. For example, the author shows how you can tie graphic attributes to audio sound, allowing you to enjoy listening to Star Wars theme music while watching a fabric of “Particles” bounce in sync with the music. Additionally, the final chapter walks you through the steps of exporting graphics from the Blender 3D modeling software package and processing them in Three.js. This is really useful if you are in need of a good 3D graphics development environment for your Three.js models.Overall, the book is a worthwhile read if you’re curious as to what you can do with Three.js and want some good examples to help understand the associated level of difficulty in developing such applications. It is by no means thorough enough to serve as a programmer’s reference, however. It doesn’t even present a tutorial on 3D spatial coordinates, which would serve as a good first step for a serious Three.js programmer. Nor does the book comment on use cases for Three.js, which would help you decide whether or not to use it for your next project. It is because of this lack of sufficient detail and practical context that I cannot give the book five stars.

Three.js Essentials (PACKT Publishing, http://www.packtpub.com/three-js-essentials/book), by Jos Dirksen, proved to be one of the tougher reads I've done in a while. When I agreed to review it, I believe PACKT was aware I had no experience nor knowledge of either Three.js or WebGL, or 3-D modelling period. (As a disclaimer, I received a free copy of this book in exchange for this review). I tackled this book from the perspective of someone with years of web development experience, solid knowledge of JavaScript, but having nothing in my background related to WebGL. And that's what my review will reflect.In the book's preface, in a section titled "Who this book is for", it states:"This book is for developers who already know JavaScript and want to get *acquainted* [empasis added] with Three.js. ... All you need to know is some basic JavaScript and HTML.""Acquainted" is an interesting choice of words and can be interpreted in a number of ways, I suppose. If what was intended was you'll come out of reading this book with a basic understanding of what Three.js is about and capable of, then I suppose this book succeeds at that. If it means that a user, such as myself, will come out of this feeling comfortable I could tackle my own projects with it, I'm much less certain that's the case.The book is highly dependent on supplementary code samples you can either download from the Packt website or retrieve from GitHub. The book uses this code by highlighting parts of it to explain how to build a number of projects that make up the individual chapters. Where I had issues was the book did not present how to entirely build the projects, making it essential for you to often look between the code examples and what was being described in the book. To learn Three.js from this book I think you'd have to be extremely driven and willing to do a lot of digging beyond what is presented in the book, diving into the code examples (and not necessarily with guidance from the book), and other resources such as the online documentation. At that point, though, you're not really learning from the book.The impression I do get from reading the book is if you have some background in Three.js, or similar library, then you may find the book useful and find some of the techniques explained here to provide some "Oh cool! There's something neat I can do!" moments. But if you are like me, an experienced web developer with no WebGL knowledge, I recommend you look elsewhere.