MathBox

Presentation-quality WebGL math graphing

MathBox is a library for rendering presentation-quality math diagrams in a browser using WebGL. Built on top of Three.js and ShaderGraph, it provides a clean API to visualize mathematical relationships and animate them declaratively.

MathBox is used through its JS-based DOM.

For background, see the article series on Acko.net.

Demos:

• Audio Visualizer
• Cylindrical Stream
• Data/Shape Mapping
• LaTeX/HTML/GL Labels
• Quaternion Hypersphere
• Render-to-Texture History
• Vertex Warping
• Volumetric Vectors

Presentations:

• The Pixel Factory

Note: this repo uses submodules, clone it with --recursive or do a git submodule update --init after cloning.

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Download

Install via npm:

npm install mathbox

Open the included /examples to see more demos.

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Docs & Help

See:

• Quick Start for a hands on introduction.
• Glossary of terms to help get familiar with MathBox and WebGL.
• MathBox API for typical usage.
• List of Primitives for a full element reference.
• Writing Custom Shaders for info on custom shaders and GPU-side processing.
• Context API for advanced usage.

Join us in the MathBox Google Group or #mathbox on Freenode.

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Usage

Include the bundle:

<script src="./mathbox-bundle.js"></script>

Construct a MathBox instance using the provided mathBox() constructor:

var mathbox = mathBox(options);
if (mathbox.fallback) throw "WebGL not supported";

var three = mathbox.three;
// three.renderer, three.scene, three.camera

See threestrap for all available options. e.g. To spawn inside a specific element, do:

var element = document.querySelector("#my-thing");
var mathbox = MathBox.mathBox({ element: element });

On initialization, it returns a MathBox API object, wrapping the MathBox . You can spawn new nodes:

<cartesian
  range={[
    [-2, 2],
    [-1, 1],
    [-1, 1],
  ]}
  scale={[2, 1, 1]}
>
  <axis axis={1} />
  <axis axis={2} />
</cartesian>

via

var view = mathbox
  .cartesian({
    range: [
      [-2, 2],
      [-1, 1],
      [-1, 1],
    ],
    scale: [2, 1, 1],
  })
  .axis({
    axis: 1,
  })
  .axis({
    axis: 2,
  });

You can select objects using .select() and a CSS-like selector to get a jQuery-like selection:

mathbox.select("cartesian > axis");

Use .print(), .inspect() and .debug() to show information about a selection.

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Development

/src tree:

• model/ - DOM tree + CSS selector handling
• primitives/ - The DOM node types (the legos)
• render/ - Smart proxies for Three.js (the glue)
• shaders/ - GLSL code
• stage/ - API / controllers
• util/ - It's inevitable

Uses gulp to build itself.

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Related Projects

• threestrap - Three.js bootstrapper
• shadergraph - Functional GLSL linker

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MathBox and ShaderGraph (c) Steven Wittens 2013-2022. MIT License.

Libraries and 3rd party shaders (c) their respective authors.