webgl

While browsing the latest award-winning websites, you may notice a lot of fancy image distortion animations or neat 3D effects. Most of them are created with WebGL, an API allowing GPU-accelerated image processing effects and animations. They also tend to use libraries built on top of WebGL such as three.js or pixi.js. Both are very powerful tools to create respectively 2D and 3D scenes.

But, you should keep in mind that those libraries were not originally designed to create slideshows or animate DOM elements. There is a library designed just for that, though, and we’re going to cover how to use it here in this post.

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Before becoming a web developer, I worked in the visual effects industry, creating award-winning, high-end 3D effects for movies and TV Shows such as Tron, The Thing, Resident Evil, and Vikings. To be able to create these effects, we would need to use highly sophisticated animation software such as Maya, 3Ds Max or Houdini and do long hours of offline rendering on Render Farms that consisted of hundreds of machines. It's because I worked with these tools for so long that I am now amazed by the state of the current web technology. We can now create and display high-quality 3D content right inside the web browser, in real time, using WebGL and Three.js.

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The question I am asked most frequently: what animation tool do you recommend?

Having worked with a slew of them, I can tell you there is no right answer. It's a complicated question and complicated answer. This post serves to clarify what to use, and when, to get you working with the right tool for the job.

If you’re here for React, we’ve got you covered! Jump down to the React section below and we’ll break down what to use and how to use it.

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