How can I rotate a background or skybox in three.js? - three.js

I need to be able to rotate the background by a specific number of degrees on the x, y, or z axes. How can I do this?
There's no rotation axis property for scene.background.
If I create a box, I can only see the images on the outside, not the inside, and it moves relative to the camera. It needs to never move, even if my distance and scale are both maxed out (like 1e+16). Bad things happen when the render far plane is too high.
Also, I would prefer not to have to pre-mirror all skybox textures if possible.
The three.js fundamentals page says nothing about this.
Other posts are 5+ years old, probably before built-in support for backgrounds.
If I set material.depthWrite = false that just makes something appear behind everything, but that doesn't keep it from moving, etc.
Sorry I have very limited knowledge of three.js, as this is not my area of expertise.

I modified/updated the code from this post Rotating a skybox in Three.js and it's working right now with only minor perspective effects (the background starts to move a tiny bit if i zoom out all the way, which is a massive zoom level)...
the background cube will be scaled to skyLength.
skyHyp is used to set the maximum viewing distance.
pxmICRF = Postive X, mirrored, International Celestial Reference Frame. it's a jpg file in base64.
this variable name describes the image, NOT where it will go in three.js CGI coordinates.
ICRF to THREE.js CGI mapping:
+x ICRF === +x CGI
-x ICRF === -x CGI
+y ICRF === -z CGI
-y ICRF === +z CGI
+z ICRF === +y CGI
-z ICRF === -y CGI
The conversion is a 90 degree rotation on the x axis.
all you need to know is the array order of left, right, top, bottom, center, back. "center" means that top and bottom need to be rotated to match above and below center.
let skyLength = 1e7;
let skyHyp = Math.sqrt(skyLength**2 + skyLength**2) + 1;
camera = new THREE.PerspectiveCamera(
25,
window.innerWidth / window.innerHeight,
0.001,
skyHyp
);
// LEF RIG TOP BOT CEN BAK
// pxmCGI nxmCGI pymCGI nymCGI pzCGI nzCGI
let walls = [pxmICRF, nxmICRF, pzmICRF, nzmICRF, nymICRF, pymICRF];
let materialArray = [];
for (let index = 0; index < 6; index++) {
let texture = new THREE.TextureLoader().load(walls[index]);
materialArray.push(new THREE.MeshBasicMaterial({
map: texture,
side: THREE.BackSide
}));
}
let geometry = new THREE.CubeGeometry(1, 1, 1);
skybox = new THREE.Mesh(geometry, materialArray);
skybox.scale.set(skyLength, skyLength, skyLength);
skybox.rotation.x = - 23.44 * Math.PI / 180;
scene.add(skybox);
now i can rotate the skybox as-needed..
i will note that using .rotation.x in some cases is unpredictable. when i need to be serious about rotating something, i use rotateOnAxis() and rotateOnWorldAxis().

Related

Map Texture to Plane without distortion

In Three.js, how can I change the way in which a texture gets mapped onto a plane?
Let's assume we have a 1x1 plane and a 16:9 image. How can I control the way in which that image gets mapped onto the plane?
By default, the image gets "squished". I would like it to maintain its aspect ratio and have any overlap get "cut off". Is there a way to configure the material or texture to do this, or would I use a shader? If so, what would it need to look like?
const planeMesh = new THREE.Mesh(
new THREE.PlaneBufferGeometry(1, 1),
new THREE.MeshBasicMaterial({
map: texture,
})
);
PS: In future, I would also like to be able to zoom into and out of the image on mouse hover without affecting the size of the plane, so would think a shader might be better?
A Texture already has several properties built-in that can do what you're looking for.
const texture = textureLoader.load("whatever.png");
const planeMesh = new THREE.Mesh(
new THREE.PlaneBufferGeometry(1, 1),
new THREE.MeshBasicMaterial({
map: texture,
})
);
// Sets the pivot point to the center of the texture
texture.center.set(0.5, 0.5);
// Make the texture repeat 0.5625 times in the x-axis to match 16:9 ratio
let ratio = 9 / 16;
texture.repeat.set(ratio, 1);
// Scale texture up to "zoom" into it
let zoom = 0.5;
texture.repeat.set(ratio * zoom, 1 * zoom);
You can read more about the .repeat .center and even .rotation properties in the Texture docs. Just keep in mind that repeating a texture is a bit counter-intuitive because you're doing the inverse of scaling a texture. So to scale a texture by 2, you have to tell it to repeat 1/2 times.

Center mesh position for text-geometry

I'm struggling with the positioning of some aframe text geometry and am wondering if I'm going about this the wrong way 😅
I'm finding that when the box renders, the center point is at the minimum point of all the axises (bottom-left-close). This means the text expands more to the top-right-far than I would expect. This is different from aframe geometry entitites where the center point is at the very center of all axises.
Sorry if the above phrasing is confusing, I'm still not sure how to best describe things in a 3d space 😆
What I'm thinking I need to do is calculate the bounding box after the element has loaded and change the position to the center. I've based that approach on the answer here AFRAME text-geometry component rotation from center?.
Does that seem like the right direction? If so, I'm currently trying to do this through an aframe component
aframe.registerComponent('center-all', {
update() {
// Need to wait for the element to be loaded
setTimeout(() => {
const mesh = this.el.getObject3D('mesh');
const bbox = new THREE.Box3().setFromObject(this.el.object3D);
const offsetX = (bbox.min.x - bbox.max.x) / 2;
const offsetY = (bbox.min.y - bbox.max.y) / 2;
const offsetZ = (bbox.min.z - bbox.max.z) / 2;
mesh.position.set(offsetX, offsetY, offsetZ);
}, 0);
}
});
This code illustrates the problem I'm seeing
This code shows my attempted solution
This code (with the translation hard coded) is more like what I would like
TextGeometry and TextBufferGeometry are both subclasses of the respective geometry classes, and so both have the boundingBox property. You just need to compute it, then get its center point:
textGeo.computeBoundingBox();
const center = textGeo.boundingBox.getCenter(new Vector3());
Then center will accurately reflect the center of the geometry, in local space. If you need it in global space, you will need to apply the matrix of the mesh that contains textGeo to the center vector, e.g.
textMesh.updateMatrixWorld();
center.applyMatrix4(textMesh.matrixWorld);

Nearby culling in Three.js despite camera not being near face

I've run into an issue after switching to a logarithmic depth buffer in Three.js. Everything runs nicely except for nearby culling of the ground as described in the following photos:
As you can see, the camera is elevated above the ground significantly. The character box that is shown is about 2 units above the ground, and my camera is set up as such:
var WIDTH = window.innerWidth
, HEIGHT = window.innerHeight;
var VIEW_ANGLE = 70
, ASPECT = WIDTH / HEIGHT
, NEAR = 1e-6
, FAR = 9000;
var aspect = WIDTH / HEIGHT;
var camera = new THREE.PerspectiveCamera(VIEW_ANGLE, ASPECT, NEAR, FAR);
camera.rotation.order = 'YXZ';
So my NEAR parameter is nowhere near 2, the distance between the camera and the ground. You can see in the second image that I even move up the camera with my PointerLockControls and still run into the issue.
Can anyone diagnose my issue?
I also tested my issue by seeing if this bug occurred with a static camera as well. It does.
Additionally, this problem only happens with the logarithmic depth buffer, as it doesn't happen with the default depth buffer.
I have my camera as a child to a controls object, which is defined as follows:
controls = new THREE.PointerLockControls(camera);
controls.getObject().position.set(strtx, 50, strtz);
scene.add(controls.getObject());
camera.position.z += 2;
camera.position.y += .1;
Here's the relevant code for PointerLockControls:
var pitchObject, yawObject;
var v = new THREE.Vector3(0, 0, -1);
THREE.PointerLockControls = function(camera){
var scope = this;
camera.rotation.set(0, 0, 0);
pitchObject = new THREE.Object3D();
pitchObject.rotation.x -= 0.3;
pitchObject.add(camera);
yawObject = new THREE.Object3D();
yawObject.position.y = 10;
yawObject.add(pitchObject);
var PI_2 = Math.PI / 2;
var onMouseMove = function(event){
if (scope.enabled === false) return;
var movementX = event.movementX || event.mozMovementX || event.webkitMovementX || 0;
var movementY = event.movementY || event.mozMovementY || event.webkitMovementY || 0;
yawObject.rotation.y -= movementX * 0.002;
pitchObject.rotation.x -= movementY * 0.002;
pitchObject.rotation.x = Math.max( - PI_2, Math.min( PI_2, pitchObject.rotation.x ) );
};
this.dispose = function() {
document.removeEventListener( 'mousemove', onMouseMove, false );
};
document.addEventListener( 'mousemove', onMouseMove, false );
this.enabled = false;
this.getObject = function () {
return yawObject;
};
this.getDirection = function() {
// assumes the camera itself is not rotated
var rotation = new THREE.Euler(0, 0, 0, "YXZ");
var direction = new THREE.Vector3(0, 0, -1);
return function() {
rotation.set(pitchObject.rotation.x, yawObject.rotation.y, 0);
v.copy(direction).applyEuler(rotation);
return v;
};
}();
};
You'll also notice that it's only the ground that is being culled, not other objects
Edit:
I've whipped up an isolated environment that shows the larger issue. In the first image, I have a flat PlaneBufferGeometry that has 400 segments for both width and height, defined by var g = new THREE.PlaneBufferGeometry(380, 380, 400, 400);. Even getting very close to the surface, no clipping is present:
However, if I provide only 1 segment, var g = new THREE.PlaneBufferGeometry(380, 380, 1, 1);, the clipping is present
I'm not sure if this intended in Three.js/WebGL, but it seems that I'll need to do something to work around it.
I don't think this is a bug, I think this is a feature of how the depthbuffer in the different settings works. Look at this example. On the right, the depthbuffer can't make up its mind between the letters in "microscopic" and the sphere. This is because it has lower precision at very small scales and starts doing rounding that oscilates between one object and another, and favoring draw order over z-depth.
It's always a tradeoff. If you want to forgo this issue, you can try raising the scale of your scene overall, so that the 'near' of the camera will never be so close to something that it can round it off - so just work in a number range that won't be rounded in the exponential model of the logarithmic z-buffer.
Also another question - how is the blue defined, because maybe what you're seeing is not clipping from being too close, but confusion between whether blue or the ground is closer. If it's just a blue box encompassing everything, you could try making it bigger and more distant from the ground.
EDIT:
Okay, this looks like it should work. so I would start looking for edge cases. What can you do to change the scene so that it does work? What can you do to make other things start breaking?
try moving the landscape far down/ far up (does the issue persist when looking up instead of down at it, does it persist even when it's unquestionably far away?)
try rotating the landscape
try changing the camera FOV
try changing the camera far plane
try changing the camera near plane from 1e-x notation to .000001, .0001,.01,.1, etc. see what effect it has.
console.log the camera object in your render function, and make sure that the fov, near, far etc, is as you set on setup and that it's not being overwritten and reset to default. check what it prints out in chrome's developer tools, you can browse the whole object, check position, parent name, all that stuff.
basically i don't see a blatant mistake, so I would guess it's something hard to spot, or it's working exactly as it should. Figure out what you can do to improve the effect/ make it worse, and that will clarify a direction to go.
A good rule of thumb for debugging is to try and just take things to an extreme, without trying to fix it, or keep the code true to its purpose, and just see in what way it breaks further/changes. report back when you find something.

Seams on cube edges when using texture atlas with three.js

I have seams between horizontal faces of the cube when use texture atlas in three.js.
This is demo: http://jsfiddle.net/rnix/gtxcj3qh/7/ or http://jsfiddle.net/gtxcj3qh/8/ (from comments)
Screenshot of the problem:
Here I use repeat and offset:
var materials = [];
var t = [];
var imgData = document.getElementById("texture_atlas").src;
for ( var i = 0; i < 6; i ++ ) {
t[i] = THREE.ImageUtils.loadTexture( imgData ); //2048x256
t[i].repeat.x = 1 / 8;
t[i].offset.x = i / 8;
//t[i].magFilter = THREE.NearestFilter;
t[i].minFilter = THREE.NearestFilter;
t[i].generateMipmaps = false;
materials.push( new THREE.MeshBasicMaterial( { map: t[i], overdraw: 0.5 } ) );
}
var skyBox = new THREE.Mesh( new THREE.CubeGeometry( 1024, 1024, 1024), new THREE.MeshFaceMaterial(materials) );
skyBox.applyMatrix( new THREE.Matrix4().makeScale( 1, 1, -1 ) );
scene.add( skyBox );
The atlas has size 2048x256 (power of two). I also tried manual UV-mapping instead of repeat, but the result is the same. I use 8 tiles instead of 6 because I have thought precision of division 1/6 causes the problem, but not.
Pixels on this line are from next tile in atlas. I tried completly white atlas and there was not any artefacts. This explains why there are not seams on vertical borders of Z-faces. I have played with filters, wrapT, wrapS and mipmaps but it does not help. Increasing resolution does not help. There is 8192x1024 atlas http://s.getid.org/jsfiddle/atlas.png I tried another atlas, the result is the same.
I know that I can split atlas into separate files and it works perfectly but it is not convenient.
Whats wrong?
I think the issue is the filtering problem with texture sheets. On image borders in a texture sheet, the gpu may pick the texel from either the correct image or the neighbor image due to limited precision. Because the colors are usually very different, this results in the visible seams. In regular textures, this is solved with CLAMP_TO_EDGE.
If you must use texture alias, then you need to fake CLAMP_TO_EDGE behavior by padding the image borders. See this answer https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/61796/sprite-sheet-textures-picking-up-edges-of-adjacent-texture. It should look something like this: (exaggerated borders for clarity)
Otherwise, the simpler solution is to use a different texture for each face. Webgl supports the cube texture and that is usually used the majority of the time to implement skyboxes.
Hack the uv, replace all value 1.0 with 0.999, replace all value 0 with 0.001 will fakely resolve part of this problem.

Rendering a large number of colored particles using three.js and the canvas renderer

I am trying to use the Three.js library to display a large number of colored points on the screen (about half a million to million for example). I am trying to use the Canvas renderer rather than the WebGL renderer if possible (The web pages would also be displayed in the Google Earth Client bubbles, which seems to work with Canvas renderer but not the WebGL renderer.)
While I have the problem solved for a small number of points (tens of thousands) by modifying the code from here, I am having trouble scaling it beyond that.
But in the the following code using WebGL and the Particle System I can render half a million random points, but without colors.
...
var particles = new THREE.Geometry();
var pMaterial = new THREE.ParticleBasicMaterial({
color: 0xFFFFFF,
size: 1,
sizeAttenuation : false
});
// now create the individual particles
for (var p = 0; p < particleCount; p++) {
// create a particle with randon position values,
// -250 -> 250
var pX = Math.random() * POSITION_RANGE - (POSITION_RANGE / 2),
pY = Math.random() * POSITION_RANGE - (POSITION_RANGE / 2),
pZ = Math.random() * POSITION_RANGE - (POSITION_RANGE / 2),
particle = new THREE.Vertex(
new THREE.Vector3(pX, pY, pZ)
);
// add it to the geometry
particles.vertices.push(particle);
}
var particleSystem = new THREE.ParticleSystem(
particles, pMaterial);
scene.add(particleSystem);
...
Is the reason for the better performance of the above code due to the Particle System? From what I have read in the documentation it seems the Particle System can only be used by the WebGL renderer.
So my question(s) are
a) Can I render such large number of particles using the Canvas renderer or is it always going to be slower than the WebGL/ParticleSystem version? If so, how do I go about doing that? What objects and or tricks do I use to improve performance?
b) Is there a compromise I can reach if I give up some features? In other words, can I still use the Canvas renderer for the large dataset if I give up the need to color the individual points?
c) If I have to give up the Canvas and use the WebGL version, is it possible to change the colors of the individual points? It seems the color is set by the material passed to the ParticleSystem and that sets the color for all the points.
EDIT: ParticleSystem and PointCloud has been renamed to Points. In addition, ParticleBasicMaterial and PointCloudMaterial has been renamed to PointsMaterial.
This answer only applies to versions of three.js prior to r.125.
To have a different color for each particle, you need to have a color array as a property of the geometry, and then set vertexColors to THREE.VertexColors in the material, like so:
// vertex colors
var colors = [];
for( var i = 0; i < geometry.vertices.length; i++ ) {
// random color
colors[i] = new THREE.Color();
colors[i].setHSL( Math.random(), 1.0, 0.5 );
}
geometry.colors = colors;
// material
material = new THREE.PointsMaterial( {
size: 10,
transparent: true,
opacity: 0.7,
vertexColors: THREE.VertexColors
} );
// point cloud
pointCloud = new THREE.Points( geometry, material );
Your other questions are a little too general for me to answer, and besides, it depends on exactly what you are trying to do and what your requirements are. Yes, you can expect Canvas to be slower.
EDIT: Updated for three.js r.124

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