I'm about to use WebGl in a academic project to preview some 2d and 3d models in a given format.

While I'm reading some documentation, I would like to know, from your experience, what would be the best API to speedup development and abstract some low-level calls and also the best IDE to work with it.

Cross browser patibility is not a major problem.

I've decided about WebGl because I would like to create a web interface for my project to help sharing my progress. Do you even remend using WebGl for that?

I'm about to use WebGl in a academic project to preview some 2d and 3d models in a given format.

While I'm reading some documentation, I would like to know, from your experience, what would be the best API to speedup development and abstract some low-level calls and also the best IDE to work with it.

Cross browser patibility is not a major problem.

I've decided about WebGl because I would like to create a web interface for my project to help sharing my progress. Do you even remend using WebGl for that?

• javascript
• web-applications
• webgl

3 Answers 3

API

Three.js is really awesome to work with regarding developing WebGL apps. It makes creating what you want very easy (create a scene object, create some things you want to show, then add them to the scene and render. No need to mess around with GLSL and low level stuff right off the bat, although you could if you really wanted to).

IDE

Chrome's console and various tools are great for debugging in general. You can use whatever text editor / IDE for javascript that you want.

At the end of the day, an IDE is only meant to help a little, you do the hard hauling, having said that, the best editor(s) I use for javascript are Sublime Text and Netbeans IDE

Then as it was already stated, Chrome DevTools is your best bet for debugging.

API (Framework)

If three.js is hard for you, or you are professional developer who just don't want to spend his time on simple things like setting up environment(scene, camera, renderer) you may try whitestorm.js.

WhitestormJS framework is a wrapper around three.js (you can use both at once, like jQuery wraps DOM). It has some extra features:

• Built-in physics of Bullet Physics 3, even softbody physics (You can use light version without physics.
• It has ponent structure (like ReactJS). You can share your plugins, ponents and use the ones from others.

*WhitestormJS is non-mercial open-source project by three.js fans.