Chorama

A modular WebGL2 rendering library built in JavaScript.

Features

• Rendering architecture

  • Modular, plugin-driven rendering pipeline
  • Multi-pass/view rendering support
  • Render-time resource and state caching to reduce redundant GPU work
  • Extensible shader include/define system

• Scene and transforms

  • Hierarchical scene graph for parent-child object relationships
  • Local/world transform propagation
  • Traversal utilities for update and render preparation flows
  • Support for static and skinned scene objects

• Geometry and mesh creation

  • Ready-to-use procedural geometry builders:
    • Plane
    • Circle
    • Cylinder
    • Cuboid
    • UV sphere
    • Wireframe conversion
  • Attribute-based mesh data model (positions, normals, UVs, tangents, skinning data)
  • Flexible vertex/index data handling for custom mesh pipelines

• Materials and shading

  • Multiple built-in shading styles:
    • Unlit/basic shading
    • Lambert diffuse shading
    • Phong shading
    • Standard physically based shading
    • Normal/depth debug shading
    • Raw/custom shader paths
  • Material properties for color, texture mapping, emissive, metallic and roughness workflows
  • Shared shader code modules for common math, color and lighting logic

• Lighting and shadows

  • Supported light types:
    • Ambient
    • Directional
    • Point
    • Spot
  • Shadow rendering support integrated into the render pipeline
  • Lighting/material integration for lit and physically based workflows

• Textures and sampling

  • Multiple texture formats and usage patterns
  • Sampler controls for filtering and wrapping behavior

• Render targets and offscreen rendering

  • Direct rendering to canvas
  • Offscreen/image render target support
  • Framebuffer-based workflows for multi-step rendering
  • Foundations for post-process and texture-to-texture pipelines

• Asset loading

  • Built-in loaders for:
    • Image textures
    • OBJ models
    • glTF scenes/assets
  • Async loading with default placeholders while assets stream in
  • Asset reuse and clone/copy loading strategies
  • glTF material/texture/skeleton parsing paths

• Camera and interaction

  • Perspective and orthographic camera projections
  • Orbit-style interaction controls for inspection/navigation
  • Camera-aware rendering integration through the plugin system

• Math and low-level utilities

  • Core math types and operations for:
    • Vectors
    • Quaternions
    • Matrices/affine transforms
  • Buffer/type conversion helpers for GPU upload workflows
  • WebGL mapping helpers for vertex formats, attachments and texture formats

Who This Is For

Use this library if you want lower-level control than full game engines, but still want reusable rendering building blocks for WebGL2 projects.

Getting Started

Requirements

• Node.js 18+
• npm
• A browser with WebGL2 support

Install dependencies

npm install

Build library bundles

npm run build

Build output:

• dist/index.umd.js
• dist/index.module.js

Run demos

npx vite .

Then open:

• http://localhost:5173/examples/index.html

Core Usage Flow

1. Create a WebGLRenderDevice from a canvas.
2. Create a render target (CanvasTarget or ImageTarget).
3. Create a WebGLRenderer with the plugins needed by your scene.
4. Build scene objects (meshes, lights, camera).
5. Call renderer.render(objects, renderDevice) each frame.