react-three-fiber

react-three-fiber is a React renderer for Threejs on the web and react-native.

npm install three react-three-fiber

These demos are real, you can click them! They contain the full code, too.

Why?

Building dynamic scene graphs declaratively with re-usable components makes dealing with Threejs easier and brings order and sanity to your codebase. These components react to state changes, are interactive out of the box and can tap into React's infinite ecosystem.

Does it have limitations?

None. Everything that works in Threejs will work here. In contrast to "bindings" where a library ships/maintains dozens of wrapper components, it just renders JSX to Threejs dynamically: <mesh /> simply is another expression for new THREE.Mesh(). It does not know or target a specific Threejs version nor does it need updates for modified, added or removed upstream features.

Is it slower than raw Threejs?

No. Rendering performance is up to Threejs and the GPU. Components may participate in the renderloop outside of React, without any additional overhead. React is otherwise very efficient in building and managing component-trees, it could potentially outperform manual/imperative apps at scale.

What does it look like?

Let's make a re-usable component that has its own state, reacts to user-input and participates in the render-loop. (live demo).

import ReactDOM from 'react-dom'
import React, { useRef, useState } from 'react'
import { Canvas, useFrame } from 'react-three-fiber'

function Box(props) {
  // This reference will give us direct access to the mesh
  const mesh = useRef()

  // Set up state for the hovered and active state
  const [hovered, setHover] = useState(false)
  const [active, setActive] = useState(false)

  // Rotate mesh every frame, this is outside of React without overhead
  useFrame(() => (mesh.current.rotation.x = mesh.current.rotation.y += 0.01))

  return (
    <mesh
      {...props}
      ref={mesh}
      scale={active ? [1.5, 1.5, 1.5] : [1, 1, 1]}
      onClick={(e) => setActive(!active)}
      onPointerOver={(e) => setHover(true)}
      onPointerOut={(e) => setHover(false)}>
      <boxBufferGeometry attach="geometry" args={[1, 1, 1]} />
      <meshStandardMaterial attach="material" color={hovered ? 'hotpink' : 'orange'} />
    </mesh>
  )
}

ReactDOM.render(
  <Canvas>
    <ambientLight />
    <pointLight position={[10, 10, 10]} />
    <Box position={[-1.2, 0, 0]} />
    <Box position={[1.2, 0, 0]} />
  </Canvas>,
  document.getElementById('root')
)

Fundamentals

Before you start, make sure you have a basic grasp of Threejs.
When you know what a scene is, a camera, mesh, geometry and material, more or less, fork the demo sandbox on the frontpage, try out some of the things you learn here.
Don't break your head, three-fiber is Threejs, it does not introduce new rules or assumptions. If you see a snippet somewhere and you don't know how to make it declarative yet, use it 1:1 as it is.

Some reading material:

Threejs-docs
Threejs-examples
Threejs-fundamentals
Discover Threejs
Do's and don'ts for performance and best practices
react-three-fiber alligator.io tutorial by @dghez_

API

Ecosystem

🌭 drei, useful helpers for react-three-fiber
💣 use-cannon, physics based hooks
🤳 react-xr, VR/AR controllers and events
📬 react-postprocessing, post-processing effects
🎮 gltfjsx, turns GLTFs into JSX components
🐻 zustand, state management
✌️ react-spring, a spring-physics-based animation library
👇 react-use-gesture, mouse/touch gestures
🧪 react-three-gui, GUI/debug tools

News, updates, community

@0xca0a's twitter
github discussions

How to contribute

If you like this project, please consider helping out. All contributions are welcome as well as donations to Opencollective, or in crypto BTC: 36fuguTPxGCNnYZSRdgdh6Ea94brCAjMbH, ETH: 0x6E3f79Ea1d0dcedeb33D3fC6c34d2B1f156F2682.

Backers

Thank you to all our backers! 🙏

Contributors

This project exists thanks to all the people who contribute.

felthy/react-three-fiber