boxes-react-bridge

Renderer-agnostic bindings for boxes — Create and compose boxes scenes with any react renderer.

Installation

yarn add @downpourdigital/boxes-react-bridge

npm i --save @downpourdigital/boxes-react-bridge

Usage

import {
	BoxesRoot,
	Renderable,
	TransformNode,
	UniformProvider,
	PerspectiveWrapper,
	MatchGlTransform,
	usePxPerUnit,
} from '@downpourdigital/boxes-react-bridge';

Concept

boxes-react-bridge only "renders" your elements into a container. This can be a boxes Scene or anything living in the boxes scene graph. What you do with the scene is then up to you – rendering, materials and geometries have to be done the "traditional", imperative way.

Prerequisites

First, you'll have to specify a point from which to tap into the react tree. This could be the root of your app. E.g. with ReactDOM:

const scene = new Scene();

ReactDOM.render(
	<BoxesRoot container={scene}>
		<App />
	</BoxesRoot>,
	document.getElementById( 'root' ),
);

All boxes related nodes inside <BoxesRoot> will now be mounted into scene.

Nodes

For now, only Renderable, TransformNode and UniformProvider are represented. The elements props closely match that of their imperative counterpart. Additionally, react ref props can be used and transforms can be supplied as arrays.

() => {
	const ref = useRef();
	
	return (
		<TransformNode
			ref={ref}
			translation={[1, 2, 3]}
		>
		</TransformNode>
	);
}

Transform matching for DOM Elements

boxes-react-bridge can infer CSS transforms from boxes transforms to sync DOM content to WebGL. Right now, only PerspectiveCameras are supported.

To get the correct CSS perspective, wrap your App in a <PerspectiveWrapper> component. This'll create a <div> with the necessary styles.

ReactDOM.render(
	<BoxesRoot container={scene}>
		<PerspectiveWrapper
		
			// your canvas dimensions in pixels
			width={1024} 
			height={1024}
			
			// the camera from which you're projecting
			camera={scene.activeCamera} 
		>
			<App />
		</PerspectiveWrapper>
	</BoxesRoot>,
	document.getElementById( 'root' ),
);

Now you can place a <MatchGlTransform> component inside the element with which you want to sync transforms. This'll place a <div> at the nodes origin. You may have to fight with CSS for a bit to get things looking right.

Use the usePxPerUnit hook to convert from boxes units to pixels.

A 2x2u square on top of a Renderable would look like this:

() => {
	const scalar = usePxPerUnit();
	
	return (
		<Renderable
			geometry={geometry}
			material={material}
		>
			<MatchGlTransform>
				<div style={{
					transform: 'translate3d(-50%, 50%, 0)',
					border: '1px solid red',
					width: 2 * scalar,
					height: 2 * scalar,
				}}
				>
					SYNCED TRANSFORMS!
				</div>
			</MatchGlTransform>
		</Renderable>
	);
}

License

© 2020 DOWNPOUR DIGITAL, licensed under BSD-4-Clause