#mywebgl

So, you can actually pretty easily host your website on the Google App Engine.

Alright, some more getting up and running to do some more WebGL stuff.

The stuff I am going to be doing, is all web based.  The first thing I want to do is get a basic spinning model up and running... maybe a few of them via different methods.

To start, I need a local development space.  So I am setting up a web server as a local environment...  based on the research and reading I have done I opted to download and run a web server called Nginx, the download is here.

Nginx is great.  It's REALLY small, like a 2 MB download and relatively easy to set up (actually, I bet it would have been entirely straightforward for someone who knows anything about web development (I know next to nothing but some html).

You should be able to go to a web browser and type hhtp://localhost and at least get a Ngnix page telling you there is an eoor or something.  I was getting nothing.

When I first went to run it, it wouldn't work... double clicking it would open a command prompt that would then just shut down.  I didn't realize it at the time, but it was launching a non-functional process, so running it multiple times was just adding a bunch of new non-working processes.

So I decided to run it from a command prompt, to see if I got any errors or feedback.  Turns out I was getting this:

nginx: [emerg] bind() to 0.0.0.0:80 failed (10013: An attempt was made to access  a socket in a way forbidden by its access permissions)

So either something was blocking it (maybe a firewall?) or is blocking the port 80?

I tried to listen on the port, and I got a PID of 4... but I couldn't find a process running on 4.  So I went hunting on the web for more info and I did finally come across this link:  http://www.mikeplate.com/2011/11/06/stop-http-sys-from-listening-on-port-80-in-windows/

So I think that points out the problem but gives what looks like could be potentially a problematic solution (but I don't know much about this stuff.)  The problem being that on Windows 7 there is a system service called http.sys that listens on port 80. That makes it impossible to run applications and services that haven't been integrated with this feature to also listen on port 80.

The better solution was to go seek out the config, then edit it to change the port to something else (like 8080):

The config is in this directory:  \nginx-1.2.5\conf

The file is:  nginx.conf

What you want to look for to change looks like this:

    server {

        listen       8080;

        server_name  localhost;

        #charset koi8-r;

        #access_log  logs/host.access.log  main;

        location / {

            root   N://WebGL_Projects//test_website//website;

            index  index.html index.htm;

        }

Above, I bolded my changes.  Aside from setting a new port, I also went ahead and mapped the ROOT to my basic test environment.

Why is this book SO awesome!?  This book would better be named "WebGL Up and Running"... because it's very good at getting you set up and rolling, despite the game it's not specifically hyper focused on the android platform either.

The first chapters, explain a lot about creating content that is browser based, interactive and utilizes canvas with 2D or 3D graphics that are webGL based.  The book points you to the right tools for the job, be it setting up and IDE for development, running a local web server for testing, or finding the javascript API's that will make your life easier (such as three.js).

So I was interested in WebGL... and went out hunting, gathering a ton of research to pour over and absorb.  I like to do this, just jump in, just poking around and seeing what is out there, or what others are doing, helps me to formulate ideas about the best approach for me to go about something new.

I ended up narrowing down to basically 2 books for guidance.  The first is this "WebGL Up and Running"

Funny title... Because the second book (which I will cover in my next post) is called "Pro Android Web Game Apps".  This book should have the title of the previous, but I will go into that later.

So, I have some basic 3D models viewable on my page using WebGL via a very basic and easy to use service called p3d.in

I thought this was pretty nifty.  It's SO quick to set up... you can basically pass it an OBJ to upload and then wholla, you have a 3D model you can tumble.

So, even if you get the 'pro' account (which includes additional shader inputs like Ambient Occlusion) the setup is still very basic; you only get one shader for the model.... you know, which is great for an unwrapped character for instance.  But isn't so hot for showing off larger assets without a shit ton of work to go bake and atlas everything together into a single map set - the drawback not only being time, but also that it's still all one material type.  

So, webGL is in it's infancy ... but I do think the idea of taking the step into interactive platform ambiguous design, is just awesome.  It's a standardized graphics API with the intent to run in all browsers (even mobile, and some devices out there support it out of the box.)  Without a programmer, I can easily make some simple interactive 3D art that will run on most platforms.  Cool.