It’s been a while! Over the past couple of years, I’ve been working off and on (and more off than on) on a playground 3D engine called Helix. Starting as a WebGL port of a personal C++ engine I did and after rewriting it umpteen times, it ended up being a platform I do like to play around with. Also, the term “for shits and giggles” comes to mind.

At this point, it comes with a long list of disclaimers. It’s not optimised very much, the API is probably a bit different from what you’d expect, and most importantly: I made it for me, not you ;) I have no interest or motivation to compete with existing 3D engines and offer support for things that I’m not personally working on myself.

But in the spirit of sharing, I decided to make the code public. This way, I can more easily put some shader experiments online and as such it may serve an educational purpose. (Much like my Flash-based engine “Wick3d” from 10 years ago ;) )

Anyway, code and some documentation is here:

• Github (code + wiki)
• Class reference

And some examples as coded by a coder (not all are optimised):

• Primitives
• Physically based materials
• Specular properties
• Glossy reflections

Some for desktop only (using WASD + mouse interaction), not optimised at all!

• Blue marble
• Sponza
• Terrain

And finally, a tongue-in-cheek nod to my partners in crime Frank Reitberger and Nicolas Barradeau!

• Amazing Horse!

But more about those guys at some other time soon :)