Since its introduction, 3D graphics in the browser has been a popular topic. But if you were to create your apps using plain old WebGL it would take a very long. But now we have some pretty useful libraries that we can take advantage of, like Three.js. So in this series I will show you how to create stunning 3D experiences for the browser.

I do expect you to have a basic understanding of 3D space before you start reading this tutorial, as I won’t be explaining things like coordinates, vectors etc.

Preparation

We will start with the code from previous part of this series. Also, grab the assets I provided and put them in the same folder as your app. Now, since we will use images here you will have to put your app on some static server (may be local), because unless you start the browser with enabled file access from files (for example using the --allow-file-access-from-files flag in Chrome) CORS will not let you load them from file. That’s all you need to do before proceeding.

Step 1: Loading the Texture

If you’ve ever got so bored that you went with creating something using pure OpenGL, you probably remember how much pain it is to load a texture. Luckily, Three.js comes with a nice function that will load and set up the texture for us. Add this line before the definition of our cube’s material:

var cubeTexture = THREE.ImageUtils.loadTexture('./box.png');
    

It’s really all you have to do in order to have your texture loaded.

In a real-world app you would have to preload the texture like any normal image and show the users some fancy loading bar to let them know that you are loading (Three.js will use the cached image then).

Step 2: Painting the Cube

Now we will apply the texture to our cube. This is also easy, you just need to replace the color definition in the cube’s material to look like this:

var cubeMaterial = new THREE.MeshLambertMaterial({ map: cubeTexture });
    

The map attribute sets the texture. Now you can open the browser and you should see a rotating, textured cube:

You can also colorize the texture, just add the color definition in the material’s options, like that:

var cubeMaterial = new THREE.MeshLambertMaterial({ map: cubeTexture, color: 0x28c0ec });
    

And now the cube turns blue:

This way you can have multiple different objects with the same texture if only the color changes.

Step 3: Multiple Materials

You can set different materials for every face of the cube. To achieve that, you have to change the whole material’s definition. First, define the materials array. Each element in the array will correspond to the material of one face. They go in this order: right, left, top, bottom, front and back:

var materials = [];
    materials.push(new THREE.MeshLambertMaterial({ map: cubeTexture, color: 0xff0000 })); // right face
    materials.push(new THREE.MeshLambertMaterial({ map: cubeTexture, color: 0xffff00 })); // left face
    materials.push(new THREE.MeshLambertMaterial({ map: cubeTexture, color: 0xffffff })); // top face
    materials.push(new THREE.MeshLambertMaterial({ map: cubeTexture, color: 0x00ffff })); // bottom face
    materials.push(new THREE.MeshLambertMaterial({ map: cubeTexture, color: 0x0000ff })); // front face
    materials.push(new THREE.MeshLambertMaterial({ map: cubeTexture, color: 0xff00ff })); // back face
    

As you can see each face has it’s own material, so you can set different textures, colors and other attributes for each one. Next, change the type of the cube’s material to THREE.MeshFaceMaterial:

var cubeMaterial = new THREE.MeshFaceMaterial(materials);
    

You only need to pass the materials array as the parameter. In the browser you should see that each side of the cube has different color:

Step 4: Particles!

Let’s say you want to create an effect of spinning snowflakes in your app. If you were to render each snowflake as a mesh you will get very low fps. That’s where particles come into play. They are way less complicated, and drawing them as a whole particle system makes them really efficient.

Start with creating a geometry for our particles:

var particles = new THREE.Geometry;
    

THREE.Geometry is a base geometry object, without any shape. Now we have to define the position of each particle in the system. Let it be completely random:

for (var p = 0; p < 2000; p++) {
    	var particle = new THREE.Vector3(Math.random() * 500 - 250, Math.random() * 500 - 250, Math.random() * 500 - 250);
    	particles.vertices.push(particle);
    }
    

This loop will create 2000 randomly placed particles and put them all in the geometry. Next, you have to define particles’ material:

var particleMaterial = new THREE.ParticleBasicMaterial({ color: 0xeeeeee, size: 2 });
    

Notice that we are using THREE.ParticleBasicMaterial, which is only for particles. In options we only define the color and the size of each particle. Finally, you can create the particle system and add it to the scene:

var particleSystem = new THREE.ParticleSystem(particles, particleMaterial);
    
    scene.add(particleSystem);
    

Now, to make the scene look better let’s rotate the particles in the direction opposite to the one that the cube is rotating in (change the render function to look like this):

function render() {
    	requestAnimationFrame(render);
    	
    	var delta = clock.getDelta();
    	cube.rotation.y -= delta;
    	particleSystem.rotation.y += delta;
    	
    	renderer.render(scene, camera);
    }
    

We moved the clock.getDelta to the variable, because if you would use it like that:

cube.rotation.y -= clock.getDelta();
    particleSystem.rotation.y += clock.getDelta();
    

The particle system would not rotate, because the second call will return a number close to zero (remember that it’s getting the time from the last call).

Now open up the browser and you should see a cube and particles rotating:

Let’s combine both things you’ve learned in this tutorial and turn those ugly white squares into real snowflakes. First, load the snowflake texture:

var particleTexture = THREE.ImageUtils.loadTexture('./snowflake.png');
    

Now, change the particles’ material to use the texture. Also, enable transparency and make the particles bigger so we can see the shape:

var particleMaterial = new THREE.ParticleBasicMaterial({ map: particleTexture, transparent: true, size: 5 });
    

If you open the browser you should see some nice snowflakes flowing around the cube:

Step 5: Smoke

Smoke effect is pretty easy to achieve and it looks nice. Start by creating the geometry, just like with the snowflakes:

var smokeParticles = new THREE.Geometry;
    for (var i = 0; i < 300; i++) {
    	var particle = new THREE.Vector3(Math.random() * 32 - 16, Math.random() * 230, Math.random() * 32 - 16);
    	smokeParticles.vertices.push(particle);
    }
    

The only difference here is that we are choosing the position from a rectangular prism with dimensions 32x32x230. Now, let’s load the texture and define the material:

var smokeTexture = THREE.ImageUtils.loadTexture('./smoke.png');
    var smokeMaterial = new THREE.ParticleBasicMaterial({ map: smokeTexture, transparent: true, blending: THREE.AdditiveBlending, size: 50, color: 0x111111 });
    

In material definition, there is a blending option. It tells the renderer how it should render one object on another. With THREE.AdditiveBlending overlapping color values will be added to each other which will result in a brighter smoke in the areas with higher particle density. We also set the color to almost black, so the smoke looks more natural.

Finally, create the particle system, move it a bit to the left and add it to the scene:

var smoke = new THREE.ParticleSystem(smokeParticles, smokeMaterial);
    smoke.sortParticles = true;
    smoke.position.x = -150;
    
    scene.add(smoke);
    

You also have to set smoke.sortParticles to true. When it’s false the background of the sprite may be drawn as black. If you open the browser you should see a still pillar of smoke next to the cube:

To animate the smoke we have to loop trough all of the particles and move them up a bit. Add this code to the render function:

var particleCount = smokeParticles.vertices.length;
    while (particleCount--) {
    	var particle = smokeParticles.vertices[particleCount];
    	particle.y += delta * 50;
    	
    	if (particle.y >= 230) {
    		particle.y = Math.random() * 16;
    		particle.x = Math.random() * 32 - 16;
    		particle.z = Math.random() * 32 - 16;
    	}
    }
    smokeParticles.__dirtyVertices = true;
    

In the loop we are adding delta * 50 to the y position of the particle. Next we check if the particle is higher than 230, if so we randomly choose its new position somewhere in the bottom of the smoke pillar. Finally, the most important thing: setting the geometry’s __dirtyVertices flag to true.

To improve the performance, Three.js is caching the objects to avoid building all of the WebGL calls again every frame, so if we change something in the geometry of the object we have to let the renderer know that it has changed. Basically, the __dirtyVertices flag will just reach the element.

If you open the browser now you should see a smoothly animated smoke next to the cube.

Conclusion

In this tutorial you’ve learned how to use textures and particles. As before, don’t be afraid to experiment a bit with your app. If you have problems take a look at the documentation. In the next article I will teach you how to load models and animate them.

Ah, the good ol’ Smashing Book Mystery riddle. Now that two days after the announcement have passed, it’s time to reveal the mystery and announce the winners. Oh, you want to figure it out first? Well, then please close this window since there are (obviously) spoilers in this post.

The Mystery Riddle

Alright, it wasn’t easy indeed. But with a quite smashing prize for the winners, we didn’t want to make it easy for you. However, we did want it to be hard enough, but not too hard which would make most readers stop trying. So after a series of usability rounds we thoroughly adjusted and edited the copy of the riddle, explaining that the mysterious animated GIF contains a hidden message.

Once you resolved the mystery, you’d see a Twitter hashtag displayed in plain text. So there shouldn’t be any room for vague interpretations. The solution should be displayed in plain text. The only hint was to watch out for the file name.

The only hint was to watch out for the file name.

Now, in our usability tests, many people went beyond their way to go through each and every frame, check the colors of each frame in Photoshop, rotate the images, run a diff between images, color-highlight different areas of the images and even play around with hex-colors which are (surprise, surprise!) actually hashtags as well (#aed4dc, anyone?).

Okay, this (#merryxmas) could be a solution but it isn’t. Well done, @jussivirtanen!

Of course, the initial reaction was to click anywhere and everywhere on the image. The house, the trees, the lake. And, according to our heatmaps, our dear readers literally set the house on fire. And yes, it’s lots and lots of clicks! Unfortunately, since it was an animated GIF and it wasn’t linked and had no clickable areas, all those clicks didn’t help resolve the riddle at all. Sorry about that!

The clicks heatmap for the riddle. The lighter an area, the more clicks it had. Our readers set the house on fire! Large view.

The solution is a bit easier though. Well, if you have to watch out for the file name, the first thing you probably do is look up the file name. The file name of the image was http://provide.smashingmagazine.com/mystery/look-into-the-house.gif. So how can you look into the house? Since it’s an animated GIF and there are no clickable elements on it, what about… changing the URL in the browser address bar? What about enter-the-house.gif or just house.gif?

enter-the-house.gif revealed a person sitting in the house, distracted by a lamp.

Yes, the key was to figure out that the URL had to be adjusted. That’s it. In fact, we created a number of animated GIFs, including common aliases such as home.gif, the-home.gif, house.gif and the-house.gif, for example, to make sure that people who “get” the idea, follow it through and get to the next level.

Well, since you entered the house already, at this point you might start to look closely at what’s going on in the image. If the image doesn’t exist on the server, you’ll be forwarded to the nobody-is-home.gif.

Well, first you might want to explore lamp.gif or light-off.gif…

Alright, the lamp is turned off now. Now we can keep reading.

…and book.gif.

Reading the book, day and night long.

Hmmm… What about sun.gif? No, no luck. Dead-end: the image doesn’t change. Alright. What else can we do? Well, what if we look under the carpet.gif?

Aha! The mouse is running under the carpet!

Aha! So we just found a mouse! But… it doesn’t help us much. So what else have we got? Well, what about the window.gif?

Oh… that’s… just… surreal.

Oh. That’s… weird. Maybe couch.gif?

The person still sitting on the couch reading the book.

Oh! Wait a second, what do we have here? Hasn’t something changed? Oh, look, we now have a pillow on the couch! You know what it means! pillow.gif.

Aha! The hashtag was hidden under the pillow!

But wait a second. We haven’t explored the picture just yet! picture.gif:

Aha! There is another hashtag hidden behind the picture!

So now it’s just about time to tweet both hashtags. You could tweet the color hex code of the house door as well (it doesn’t change in the animation), but you didn’t have to. So does it mean that the mystery is resolved? Oh, wait a second, mystery-resolved.gif?

The mystery is resolved! The winner will be going to Oxford in March 2013!

The Winners

Well, we knew that the riddle wouldn’t be that easy, but it was remarkable to see the first tweets with both correct hashtags appearing within minutes after the riddle was announced. In fact, it turned out that our dear readers are absolutely smashing indeed: #feelsmashing and #newsmb4perspective.

The first place has earned the person who was the quickest to resolve the riddle. We raffled the other lucky winners randomly, however the requirement was that at least one of the hashtags had to be found. The winners can select any prize of their choice (be it a bag, a Smashing Library account, printed books or anything else). And they all get the Smashing Cody Stress-Relief Ball, too. All winners are being contacted. The winners are:

• Robin Björklund, with less than 5 minutes to figure out the solution has won a roundtrip to Oxford and the full Smashing package,
• Quim Manrique Roca,
• Cliff Seal,
• Rob Masters,
• Daniel Marklund,
• Cory Evan Wright,
• pjetr.

Congratulations! And thanks to everyone who participated! We hope we didn’t waste too much of your productive work time (and didn’t cause too many headaches, of course).

Behind The Scenes

Guillaume Kurdjian is a 22 year old freelance illustrator and animator from Nantes, France. Guillaume likes to experiment with stuff on his computer and climb trees.

Do you know that feeling when you find a designer and just want to work with them no matter what? Well, as we had stumbled upon Guillaume Kurdjian‘s animated GIFs, we knew that at some point we’d love to work on a series of animations with Guillaume. With the Smashing Book Mystery the opportunity presented itself.

So in a long thread we designed all the different variations of GIFs, ending up with over 30 different GIFs, and drafts, and ideas that were thrown away and the ones that did make it to the final stage. Since we wanted the theme of the book — New Perspectives — to be recognizable, the design was quite surreal (the guy fishing a book from a lake, lamp going crazy, scary people outside the window) to indicate the “new perspectives” theme. Also, the visual design and the perspective of the person sitting in the house wasn’t chosen randomly.

Another tricky thing was the speed of the animations and the way animations would loop. We didn’t want to make it too difficult, or too fast, or have many things happening at the same time since the riddle would get more difficult in the end. In fact, we had poor souls staring at the GIF literally for hours to figure out what’s going on and trying to click all the different areas because the animation was a bit too quick.

All designs were a series of iterations to make the overall riddle not necessarily perfect, but just right. So a big “thank you” to Guillaume for following through and being so enthusiastic and kind about all the changes made.

Now, are you ready for the second round? ;-)

© Vitaly Friedman for Smashing Magazine, 2013.

For designers passionate about the latest developments across the full spectrum of visual design, there’s a brand new site that features some of the most exciting, innovative and inspiring design projects taking place today. Every day our sister-site, DesignFaves.com, trawls the web seeking out the projects with the most buzz surrounding them and delivers a compact, visual summary right to your inbox.

Focused on all fields of design, you’ll find graphic design, art, architecture, furniture design, fashion, branding, photography, and everything else that’s visual and engaging.

You can sign up for the newsletter and get your daily dose of design inspiration each morning, or browse through the site when you’re feeling tapped for new ideas. Whoever you are, and whatever you love, you’ll find fresh projects on DesignFaves.com.

Every week we’ll be bringing you a summary of the best the site has to offer, and to whet your appetite, here are our favorite projects this week:

The tall, dark world of Daniel Danger’s gothic illustrations

NEXT architect’s looping bridge in China

Custom elongated Jaguar E-Type with matching retro trailer

Spomenik: Abandoned monuments or alien sculptures?

Frozen moments of a bird in flight: Sølve Sundsbø

Hilarious cats with noodly legs by Meowtfit

Infinite staircase sculpture by David McCracken

New concept design gives M&M’s a fresh brand facelift

Photographs of Iceland through the geometric filter of Siggi Eggertsson

Dresses made out of balloons by Rie Hosokai

Futuristic Motorola ads from the groovy ’60s

Furniture design inspired by nature: The Ivy Chair

The futuristically groovy Bubble House

‘Electric Blossom’ still life photography by Torkil Gudnason

Sculpted skeletons of classic cartoon characters. Can you recognize them?

New iPhone 6 concept. Where is the home button?

The electric Bike 13 is the future of cycling

Which of these posts is your favorite? What would you like to see DesignFaves.com cover? Let us know in the comments.

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This Thanksgiving, we would like to share a clean, simple and professional responsive email template to you. This template is compatible with multiple email clients such as Outlook 2007, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and more.

This freebie is by an HTML newsletter coding service, EmailCraft.com.

Preview

Features

• Compatible with popular email clients: Outlook 2007+, Outlook Express, Apple Mail, Windows Live Email, Mozilla Thunderbird, Google Mail, Opera M2, AOL Webmail, Yahoo! Mail, Outlook.com
• PSD file is included
• Can be used with email campaign tools such as MailChimp, Campaign Monitor, and Constant Contact

Hopefully this free responsive email template will save you lots of precious time.

About the Creators of the Freebie

EmailCraft.com is a team of designers and front-end developers that offer stunning newsletter designs and neat, quality markup. They have been serving clients since 2010 as a part of the PSD2HTML family. Check out some examples of their work.

Download

• Free Responsive Email Template: Thanksgiving Theme [11.6 MB]

Related Content

• Creating HTML Emails: An Overview for Web Designers
• 9 Tips for Emailing Important People
• 10 Definitive Tips for Writing Captivating Emails
• Related categories: Freebies and Resources

About the Author

Julia S. Grey is a passionate web designer with an exceptional eye for creative and innovative stuff. She works at EmailCraft.com, a newsletter design and development company. Find out more about EmailCraft here.

The post Free Responsive Email Template: Thanksgiving Theme appeared first on Six Revisions.

If you are a freelancer or you work from home, then you might know exactly how it feels to be on your own little island. You’re cooped up in your office all the I time trying to get work done. If you’re anything like me, you only look up and go outdoors when your stomach tells you it can’t handle any more.

Maybe you’re not that bad, but it isn’t uncommon to feel like you sometimes need someone to talk to without reading and imagining how they sound in messages. Sometimes you need some real, live, organic interaction with people. It frees your mind, helps you with ideas and lets you realize you aren’t the only person on the planet.

It can sometimes be rough for you, especially if you enter a new town or new industry and have no contacts. It may also feel hard because you just don’t think there’s anyone out there with your interests. Stepping out the house and meeting new people is imperative for the designer who works from home. If you haven’t already figured out ways to do so, here are some tips to help you get a jumpstart on connecting and networking with people.

Meet-ups and groups

I’m the type of person who doesn’t like to be placed in an atmosphere just for the sake of talking to someone. Speed networking and mixers just don’t bode well for me. On the other hand, I love being part of groups where people get together because they are passionate or interested in the same things. It makes conversation easier because I already have a conversation starter.

Most people who work from home are the same way. And for this reason, I recommend you join a group of like-minded individuals to talk with. Groups with members are big on making sure people feel like they belong. Finding the right group doesn’t mean you’re on the outside looking in, but it’s about feeling connected to other passionate people.

The benefits of many organizations and groups can be great. You can learn something from gatherings, receive free and discounted perks and even become a mentee in a mentorship program. A good place to start finding groups is Meetup.com. You can search through certain categories to see when groups meet and what they are about. Other places to start are nationally recognized design and other related groups (such as advertising, technology, etc.).

Find events and conferences

Maybe you are okay with speed networking and mixers. There are tons all over the world and it seems like those type of events won’t stop anytime soon. Maybe you want an event with a little more substance that caters directly to you. Fortunately, there are many ways to find that.

Meetup.com is great for groups and some events, but Eventbrite.com is even better for your local events. You can search your area in whatever category and find lectures, helpful get-togethers and more via Eventbrite. I found so many great events and conferences that I probably would’ve never known about had not been for Eventbrite.

Big design conferences happen all the time throughout the year. Lots of blogs and businesses put them on to talk about what’s going on in the world of design. While talking to people is not a requirement in any of these events and conferences, you’ll easily find opportunities to speak and interact with interesting people. It’d be wise to take advantage of such a thing.

Find an interesting person

If you’re more focused on quality over quantity, it may a good idea for you to find an interesting person in your area. Perhaps you’ve heard of them in the news and in the community. Or you may have stumbled across their work online. Many people are very easily approachable and welcome the opportunity to “talk shop” with other freelancers and designers.

Since I’ve been writing, people in my area (and other faraway lands) often send me messages just wanting to chat. Just recently, I got asked to discuss business ideas and freelancing over lunch. And what person in their right mind can deny free food? Reaching out to people you find interesting is wonderful because you should already have an idea of what draws you to this person — you already have things to talk about.

If all goes well, it’s going to be hard for that person to forget about you. And sending follow up emails is perfectly fine as well. One on ones are the perfect way to establish a connection and a relationship.

Take a class

Being a designer is almost synonymous with always learning. We go through so many trends in a year that we must learn and we are expected to know more and more about the next skillset over. As a print designer, you may always be asked about the web or mobile. As a web designer, you may always be asked about programming and databases. 

As fun as it is to teach ourselves things or sit down and watch thousands of videos about stuff all day, it’s nothing like actually being in a classroom. You’re always in a room with someone smarter than you who can answer all the questions that video doesn’t even touch. And then there’s always someone you can try to teach to check if you really know your stuff.

Classroom settings are great places to build connections. Maybe you want to take some courses at a nearby college or university. Maybe your local library or some other organization offers quick little classes. Either way, taking classes is a great way to meet people and increase your skillset.

Get involved in the community

I’m a firm believer in the idea that if people work together, then they have to make connections and talk to one another. It’s impossible to work together without communicating! Civic organizations always need help with something somewhere. By getting involved you have the opportunity to practice your skills, do work that may be recognized by many people and make connections.

There are some groups whose sole purpose is to work on things for the community  which are great places to start. But there are so many other great ways you can volunteer just by contacting people in your neighborhood. You get a chance to create for them and build trust in your work that can lead to paid work or referrals. 

Take your work with you

A couple of months ago, I purchased my DSLR camera. I was so excited, I took it everywhere with me to take pictures of everything I saw. As a byproduct of this, people either came up to me and asked if I could take their pictures or asked me about how I was loving my camera and other photography related questions.

As designers, I understand how this type of thing can be hard, but propping your laptop open and doing some work at a nearby cafe is totally okay. Even sketching some things out on your tablet can get some people interested in whatever you’re doing. I’ve even seen designers and coders wearing fun little shirts that put them out there, referencing their skillset. You have to get a bit creative with this part, but sometimes making it known and making yourself attractive is all you need to get a person talking to you about work.

Conclusion

Think about the connections you’ve made that are strong today. Chances are you didn’t just shoot them an e-mail or shove a business card in their hands and hope for the best. You probably took the time out to make a real connection with that person. Maybe they were a classmate, colleague or just someone you met and kept in touch with. Networking and getting to know people doesn’t have to be a foreign concept because we’re freelancers and it doesn’t have to be put on a pedestal. Always remember that these types of things take time so go out there and meet some new folks.

Do you work from home and find networking difficult? What’s the best way to make new connections? Let us know in the comments.

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‘Tis the season to give thanks. And we are thankful for you, our wonderful donors! We hope that you and your loved ones have a great Thanksgiving!

Sharing your call data with researchers could help show what the NSA can deduce from the data it harvests.

In an attempt to discover what the NSA can learn about people from the data it harvests from telecommunications companies, researchers at Stanford have set out to compile their own massive database of call and text logs—and they want you to help.

What do you think of when you hear the words “Ultimate Frisbee”?

Does the image of hippies tossing a plastic disk across a beach come to mind?

This image may have accurately represented Ultimate Frisbee in the past—but this is no longer the case.

The sport (yes, sport) is played by highly competitive and hard-working athletes who often suffer injury in the name of the game.

Ultimate has been growing and expanding rapidly across the U.S. The Sports & Fitness Industry Association ranked Ultimate as one of the fastest growing sports in the nation. In the past year, two professional leagues were established: the MLU and AUDL.   

The sport has garnered enough attention that it is now aired on ESPN.

So what makes the sport unique?

First and foremost, it is self-officiating, meaning there are no referees.  Sounds ridiculous, right?

Well, the ability for players to work out fouls with each other fosters the spirit of the game, such attention to sportsmanship is the basic philosophy of Ultimate.

It is also one of the only sports to encourage equal participation of both men and women. The game is often played co-ed.

Hopefully as the stigma and stereotypes of Ultimate Frisbee are shaken off, the sport can truly flourish.