Documentation: State of WebGPURenderer and Nodes

[hybridherbst]

Description

I'm trying to understand what the current state is, where examples went, and how things in regards to nodes are done now. This is a documentation issue :)

From what I can see:

• All WebGL examples regarding node materials have been removed in NodeMaterial: Remove WebGLNodeBuilder #28167.

• New features and bug fixes to the nodes system are only added to the WebGPURenderer. No nodes-related features are officially available for WebGLRenderer anymore.

• WebGPURenderer is currently in examples. It's not part of core three.js. WebGPURenderer is now in a separate bundle.

• There is no documentation (that I could find) on how to switch from WebGLRenderer to WebGPURenderer. I was wondering if switching with { forceWebGL: true } is a safe step, for example.

Documentation Questions

1. Is WebGPURenderer mature enough to start switching to it?

2. Is WebGPURenderer with { forceWebGL: true } currently 100% matching WebGLRenderer?

3. Are there specific things to keep in mind when using GLTFLoader with WebGPURenderer? Is there anything extra that a developer needs to do? Does it use nodes when doing that, or the previous materials?

4. Will WebGPURenderer move to core at some point, or will it stay an example?

5. Is there documentation for switching? For example, it's not clear to me if all classes WebGL* need to be swapped, or if it's fine to use WebGLRenderTarget with WebGPURenderer.

Solution

Documentation for how to start using WebGPURenderer.

Alternatives

Waiting until a further point and not starting to use/test WebGPURenderer.

Additional context

No response

[Mugen87]

This isn't a complete answer but at least a start.

1. Is WebGPURenderer mature enough to start switching to it?

That really depends on the use case but in general no. We need a couple of more releases to add missing features of WebGLRenderer and fix some known bugs and performance issues.

2. Is WebGPURenderer with { forceWebGL: true } currently 100% matching WebGLRenderer?

No.

It will never be a 100% match since WebGL/GLSL specific classes like ShaderMaterial, RawShaderMaterial or GLBufferAttribute won't be supported. Besides, certain features might be implemented differently e.g. how post-processing or clipping works or how a mirror (reflector) is defined.

3. Are there specific things to keep in mind when using GLTFLoader with WebGPURenderer? Is there anything extra that a developer needs to do? Does it use nodes when doing that, or the previous materials?

WebGPURenderer can process existing material configurations except for ShaderMaterial and RawShaderMaterial. So the renderer understands MeshStandardMaterial, MeshPhysicalMaterial and MeshBasicMaterial (which is used by GLTFLoader) but of course it internally uses the new material system for rendering.

4. Will WebGPURenderer move to core at some point, or will it stay an example?

In dev it is already in the core. With the next release r167 there will be separate builds with WebGPURenderer and the node material (three.webgpu.js and three.webgpu.min.js). These new builds do not include WebGLRenderer.

5. Is there documentation for switching? For example, it's not clear to me if all classes WebGL* need to be swapped, or if it's fine to use WebGLRenderTarget with WebGPURenderer.

Not yet. IMO, WebGPURenderer isn't yet at the state where we can recommend the broad community to switch over. When we are confident about that, there will be a migration guide.

[hybridherbst]

Thank you so much for taking a stab at it!

I have some follow-up questions:

1. I would like to start using TSL and nodes. A couple releases earlier (r162), I was able to do so from WebGLRenderer. Now, I can't figure out how, and all examples disappeared. How can I use nodes again while staying on the recommended and stable WebGLRenderer?

2. Is there a path already for WebXR support in WebGPURenderer? ("path" as in: someone is interested in taking it on for three.js, spec is ready, ...). I couldn't find examples, so I assume it hasn't been started yet.

   • from looking at the code, it seems that renderer.xr only has { enabled: boolean } at the moment,
   • and things like getSession(), getCamera(), ... have not been added yet.

Thanks again

[Mugen87]

1. I would like to start using TSL and nodes. A couple releases earlier (r162), I was able to do so from WebGLRenderer. Now, I can't figure out how, and all examples disappeared. How can I use nodes again while staying on the recommended and stable WebGLRenderer?

This isn't possible. TSL and nodes only work with WebGPURenderer since a meaningful integration in WebGLRenderer wasn't possible.

2. Is there a path already for WebXR support in WebGPURenderer? ("path" as in: someone is interested in taking it on for three.js, spec is ready, ...). I couldn't find examples, so I assume it hasn't been started yet.

This task has not been started yet.

[hybridherbst]

This isn't possible

This is not really clear to me. It was possible up until r163. What has changed? I understand that some nodes can't be supported, but it was definitely possible to construct node graphs, use MaterialXLoader, ... from WebGLRenderer.

[Mugen87]

Well, with "isn't possible" I mean that the effort is just too high to integrate and maintain the node material in its current state into WebGLRenderer. Ideally, we can move away from WebGLRenderer as fast as possible but that means we have to limit what we want to support in WebGLRenderer and focus on WebGPURenderer instead.

[hybridherbst]

I have some follow-up questions regarding documentation that I think can live in this issue as well.

three/webgpu deprecates ShaderChunk, ShaderLib, UniformsLib and other WebGL-related code paths.
I would like to understand what the current thinking is around upgrade paths for WebGPURenderer.

Here are a few examples where I would welcome some insights on how this will conceptually work (or how it works today?):

1. Custom tonemapping
   Custom tonemapping so far worked by patching ShaderChunk.tonemapping_pars_fragment.
   

   three.js/examples/webgl_tonemapping.html

   Line 76 in 817a222

   THREE.ShaderChunk.tonemapping_pars_fragment = THREE.ShaderChunk.tonemapping_pars_fragment.replace(

   
   Conceptually, I think in WebGPURenderer the equivalent would be to replace some tonemapping node (?) in all other shaders that use that tonemapping node. But I don't know how. Especially when it's supposed to be done scene-wide (and not on an individual material level).

2. Custom lighting and shadow handling
   Similarly, ShaderChunks are patched for PCSS shadows.
   

   three.js/examples/webgl_shadowmap_pcss.html

   Line 242 in e4a6fd8

   THREE.ShaderChunk.shadowmap_pars_fragment = shader;

   
   I'm not sure what the node-based upgrade path here is. It seems there is an example for custom lighting models but that is not quite the same. Modifying the lighting scene-wide (and not on an invididual material level) is also not quite clear to me.

3. Per-material uniforms
   The combination of material.onBeforeCompile, UniformsLib, and ShaderChunk allowed to make and use custom uniforms for objects that could be modified per frame.
   I'm not sure what the node-based upgrade path here is. I found https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/blob/master/examples/webgpu_instance_uniform.html which seems to cover some of that.

[WestLangley]

I, too, would like to see a working code snippet showing how to assign a custom ToneMappingNode to the renderer -- one that duplicates Reinhard, for example.

[Mugen87]

It is not possible to do that. There is no Renderer.toneMappingNode yet.

In the meanwhile, custom tone mapping can be achieved via post processing like so: https://jsfiddle.net/tw1kr7ox/

The fiddle duplicates the Uncharted 2 tone mapping from webgl_tonemapping. The relevant bits are:

postProcessing = new THREE.PostProcessing( renderer );
postProcessing.outputColorTransform = false; // disable default output tone mapping and color space conversion
  
const scenePass = pass( scene, camera );

postProcessing.outputNode = vec4( CustomToneMappingNode( scenePass.rgb, renderer.toneMappingExposure ), scenePass.a ).toOutputColorSpace();

[hybridherbst]

@Mugen87 an understanding question, do I get it right that the WebGL fallback renderer does not have any Nodes support anymore? That was also removed?

[RenaudRohlinger]

@hybridherbst WebGL fallback renderer does have node support.

Example:
https://threejs.org/examples/?q=material%20loader#webgpu_loader_materialx

[hybridherbst]

Thanks! I think I keep being confused by what belongs to what.

Could you confirm that my understanding of the folder structure is correct now:

1. WebGPURenderer.js and WebGPURenderer.Nodes.js are the "actual" renderer

2. WebGPUBackend.js (in the same folder) and WebGLBackend.js (in the webgl-fallback folder) are the backends for WebGPURenderer

3. webgpu/nodes/BasicNodeLibrary.js and /StandardNodeLibrary.js are used for both WebGLBackend and WebGPUBackend

4. the other files there, webgpu/nodes/WGSL*, are only used for WebGPUBackend, while webgl-fallback/nodes/* is only used for WebGLBackend