BlogJanuary 25, 2025

Immersive Web: Mastering WebGL and Three.js for 2025

Salat Mahenoor

The web is no longer flat. With the rise of high-performance browsers and powerful hardware, developers are increasingly turning to WebGL to create "immersive" experiences that were once reserved for gaming consoles.

The Power of Three.js

Three.js has become the industry standard for 3D on the web. It abstracts the complexities of raw WebGL, allowing us to build stunning visuals with relative ease. But high performance requires more than just knowing the API.

Optimization Techniques for 3D on Web

Geometry Instancing: Reducing draw calls by reusing the same geometry for multiple objects.
Texture Compression: Using formats like Basis Universal to keep load times low without sacrificing quality.
Shader Magic: Offloading heavy computations to the GPU using custom GLSL shaders.

Real-World Application: The 3D Robot Experience

In my Robot - Interactive 3D Experience project, I focused on hyper-realistic rendering. The challenge was maintaining a smooth 60 FPS while rendering complex materials and real-time lighting.

Key Learnings:

Lighting is Everything: Using HDR images for environment lighting (IBL) makes a massive difference in realism.
Interactivity: Mapping user mouse movements to 3D object rotations creates an immediate sense of "presence."

Looking Forward: WebGPU

2025 is the year of WebGPU. This new standard will unlock even more power, allowing for real-time ray tracing and massive compute tasks directly in the browser.

Visit my Work Section to see Three.js in action.