Build a Mindblowing 3D Portfolio Website // Three.js Beginner’s Tutorial

Learn the basics of Three.js - a tool for building amazing 3D graphics with JavaScript. In this tutorial, we create an animated 3D scrolling animation for a portfolio website github.com/fireship-io/threej...
#3D #webdev #js
🔗 Resources
Three.js Docs threejs.org/
WebGL Overview • WebGL 3D Graphics Expl...
Inspiration atelier.net/virtual-economy/
Scrolling Animation with Three.js
📚 Chapters
00:00 Mindblowing 3D Websites
00:42 What we’re building
01:19 What is Three.js
02:12 Project Setup
03:35 Scene
03:52 Camera
04:28 Renderer
05:07 Geometry
05:28 Material
06:02 Mesh
06:16 Animation Loop
07:13 Lighting
08:45 Three.js Helpers
09:17 Orbit Controls
09:56 Random Generation
11:05 Scene Background
11:37 Texture Mapping
12:57 Scroll Animation
14:36 CSS Grid
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[@stolensentience]

Wow this adds a whole new dimension to my programming

[@williamxsp]

🤣🤣🤣

[@Beryesa.]

Hehe a "z" one

[@welikerosafloyd]

See what you did there

[@opera_geek]

Duuuude

[@erikawwad7653]

@@somerandomguy2892 use linux

[@katyj98]

*"It's guaranteed to get you a job, or your money back"* ... I paid nothing

[@Fireship]

That's why I can offer this amazing deal

[@TerriTerriHotSauce]

I paid attention.

[@Kevin-jc1fx]

That's exactly what you'll get back. Nothing😂

[@akhillshetty2140]

​@@Fireship Just take my money man

[@juancamiloq1]

We all love you so much

[@tobiasstiller8221]

I rarely comment on any videos on youtube, but Jeff, the comprehensive yet compressed way of teaching things, like you do here, is more than awesome. it's so amazing. i am speechless. i really want to say thank you for your effort to contribute to the dev community in that way.

[@PlanetComputer]

6

[@nitsanbh]

+1

[@iAbhijeetShukla]

jeff who?

[@tobiasstiller8221]

@@iAbhijeetShukla dude the guy providing all that stuff is Jeff..

[@iAbhijeetShukla]

@@tobiasstiller8221 thanks

[@bennailyes9303]

You’re the only guy that I slow the speed down instead of speeding it. in all my career as a developer, in my opinion, you're more productive than all I know. thank you a lot

[@Titton]

+111

[@emonymph6911]

He is just a bloody showoff he doesn't teach he just shows off his own skillset, biggest tool in the industry.

[@hothub8903]

@@emonymph6911 ikr

[@nullbeyondo]

Ah yes.. slow down.. sure... *sweats in 2x speed*

[@ontheruntonowhere]

@@emonymph6911 That's what a teacher does, dufus 🤪🤪

[@jonlothar6126]

Everyone's commenting at light speed, since we've been sitting here waiting for this for days!

[@rma9490]

So true man!

[@Fireship]

I've been meeting with pro members all month, content frequency will increase in June

[@user-ir2fu4cx6p]

I come here by accident ,

[@jonlothar6126]

@@Fireship Sounds awesome! I didn't mean it as an insult at all - your content is definitely worth the wait!

[@drizzzzz]

Best coding channel of all time

[@joshlavallee5255]

Just a quick two suggestions: 1) The texture loader can be instantiated once and used over and over no need to create a new one and load each time. 2) A way to bump performance for the stars, since the geometry and material don't change for each of the 200 stars, only the position, take them out of the function so your page isn't instantiating a new geometry/material each call, just use the already created objects 👍

[@sam_bit7148]

Can you give more details about the first suggestion how to do it

[@mikediaz7628]

Proxy geometry basically?

[@DigitEgal]

About 2) im thinking if he may go further to create a 4dimentional Website where you have a slider in your 3D World to change the perspective & make more Informations visible (similar to 4D Toys but with changing content instead of changing geometrys) that would really put a new dimension into coding 😜

[@GekijoOkami222]

Yeah, f.e. when using vueJS. Instantiate the scene, renderer, camera and other utilities as globals so that you save on memory. Then bind them in the correct vue component and this way you can also use sub-components to do stuff with the same scene. Would be better if there was a vue-plugin, but I’m not sure there is one yet.

[@programmingpython584]

random generation of stars 10:00 doesnot work properly on my side. Though it generates the stars but it messes with the torus geometry. Torus is taking the same color as the star and is not rotating, + also gets random position due to stars.

[@Halfspacer]

I was happily typing away at work when Github Copilot suddenly suggested I add code to create a button. The code suggestion also happened to include an onClick URL to a KZbin video. And that's how I ended up here.

[@pandawoan]

OMG YES! THIS IS LITERAL GOLD!

[@alejosky]

You used the word "literal" figuratively... my brain-compiler just exploded.

[@GuilleAcosta124]

I saw this like a week ago and I said I need to follow along this tutorial. Everything worked flawlessly, thanks for introducing me to this world of 3D rendering stuff on browsers. Thanks!

[@CainanParker]

You have a way of moving through things much quicker than other three.js tutorials, but for some reason it makes so much more sense.

[@jessemoeller8557]

This simple tutorial touches on so many different concepts in a non-trivial way. Well done! Excellent content.

[@franthor]

Man it is so good that you offer the github repo for your videos. Thanks! That way I don't have to write every step and it is possible to grab the concepts much faster, just doing some changes to the code, testing stuff. Also the fast pace of the video is very good. I usually watch tutorials at 2x, not yours. Your video I may actually play more than once to get all the details. Good job!

[@SilverishKitten]

That's definitely not how you learn to code efficiently lol

[@IshmamAhmed]

@@SilverishKitten I don’t think that’s their point. Obviously you should learn concepts before copy pasting from GitHub repos but we don’t know if he/she did that

[@mayanksingh8840]

You're just a great learner and a teacher! Hats off to you man, and not forgetting the developers behind three.js 👏

[@ChimkenAndRice]

I've been eyeing on threejs since the last few weeks for building my portfolio. The first 3 minutes of your video already gave me 2 ideas I can work on. Thanks a lot for this, It's golden!

[@pablocortes682]

Wow, just wow! Thank you so much for this tutorial. You made threejs so easy to follow, with the basics and its variables and possibilities, and how to apply it to a website, and all in just over 15 min. Thank you very much!

[@user-pm4vd6ij8i]

one of the most awesome tutorial that I have ever seen. introducing concepts one by one and show the difference step by step. this is the correct way to illustrate something that seems complex to the beginner. this video taught me a lot not just the code. thansk!

[@JandyCZ]

I work as a developer/sw engineer. Your cahnnel alone made me jump 5 steps ahead in no time. Thanks to you I am not only interested in coding more, I am eager to discover new technologies and possibilities in my work and hobby.

[@RMike-xq1cm]

After watching other videos and reading documentation I couldn't wrap my head around Three.js I wanted to ditch it but this video popped up. This was very comprehensive and most importantly very well structured.Thank you.

[@ramiroandrescruz4504]

there is no way to not love these videos man, thank you for you great work

[@vinodabcd]

God! Your videos are on another level.. I've been leeching your videos for a while now but I had to comment - I think this is the near-perfect way to explain "code"... I can see the real-world applications, get inspired from all the possibilities, pick up computer science concepts as well as jot down what coding keywords I need to deep dive into... I'm not kidding but you've literally inspired me to pickup front-end dev (I'm currently an utter noob)..

[@xinaesthetic]

Pro tip: if you change addStar() so that the geometry and material are initialised outside the loop and shared by all of them, it’ll be more efficient. Even more efficient, you can merge a bunch of geometries so you just have one mesh for all of the stars, and you save a bunch of draw calls and matrix math on the cpu.

[@hilelmauriciosalomon4465]

I'll keep it in mind

[@Rayzax94]

the fact that as someone who is fairly new to programming I understood this whole thing, speaks a lot to you explaining abilities!! Awseome content! I"ll try it out this weekend, thank you!

[@nitsanbh]

This is a GREAT tutorial! Full with useful info, skips the bs, and most importantly, not just reading the documentation site out loud

[@garathedra]

You are the ultimate king of tutorials. Thank you !

[@galabra1]

This is fantastic! Such great methodological explanations and examples! Love it, thank you so much

[@user-ym7un8bn2i]

Whoa that's just outstanding! I've never thought something like that is possible to do in simple programming, it's completely impressive! That's some incredible ability to learn here.

[@smokeyoak]

Love that short css-grid explanation a the end. So much better than the way we used to do it

[@Trixz-the]

Nice video bro. Been waiting for that!

[@FinlayDaG33k]

Me eyes: "This looks amazing" My brain: "R.i.p batteries"

[@hellfire92837]

and possibly cpu/gpu meltdown too

[@Macatho]

Indeed. Nothing worse than a website that makes your laptop go VROOOOOOM

[@lxhan893]

So this wouldn’t be a good idea?

[@FinlayDaG33k]

@@lxhan893 Depends on your goals and values. On my website, I want my clients to use as little resources as possible without compromising on aesthetics too much. Some rather have all the gimmicks and eye candy instead.

[@ginger-viking]

This entire video was incredible. Using grid to make 12 equal columns blew my mind.

[@andreimarian85]

It is just incredible how you explain everything that you are doing.Great example,great tutorial!

[@simas5983]

I was literally researching how to make a 3D website an hour ago, then I go to my subscriptions and see this. WHAT

[@leonmher5342]

Dude it’s insane! Fast and clear explanation. Thanks for saving our time, cause this could easily be a one hour long video lol

[@HP-ol2ux]

ah... this content is gold. Not a second is wasted, and yet, it does not feel too fast, amazing

[@jamesmoffitt4503]

I tried three 50 minute videos and they couldn’t even get the damn program installed on my computer. In 15 minutes you have me making 3D objects that I can play with. You’re the man.

[@fpspsyduck]

Yes! Was waiting for this tutorial!!

[@victorsaisse1340]

Wow, amazing! I just finished the role tutorial, and it so satisfying to complete it as easy as you made look! Thank you so much, cheers from Brazil!

[@Fractal_reComm]

vc teve algum problema para rodar o three.js n estou conseguindo rodar o codigo

[@Behuman20]

That’s awesome. Thanks for making such amazing videos and keeping them short and to the point.

[@mequambluespark8686]

I don't normally comment on tutorial videos but this was so, so excellent and concise, you earned yourself a subscriber for this content! Well done :D

[@talhaibnemahmud]

Probably the best ThreeJS video on KZbin. Hat's off ❤️

[@raphaelbaier6984]

The surface off the moon is in fact still smooth (the vertices have not changed), the normal map just modifies how the Moon is lit by the shader, you would need some sort of vertex displacement, for actual bumps

[@SayantanDeyIshanz23]

I started reading about three js today and this your starter video arrives! ❤️

[@jbitbi2851]

Getting into this space as newbie, this tutorial lights me up with 😀infinite possibilities of creating/customizing stunning, fluid apps in D3 js. Thanks so much!

[@husler7424]

Waiting for full tutorial on Three.js with full demo!💥

[@andrewescu]

It's hard to go back to other youtube coding tutorials after getting use to this quality of content, keep it up man!

[@daniels8112]

this is facts tho. sets my expectations far too high for any other content

[@JonCianci12]

This is one of the coolest tutorials on three js! I’m excited to get started!!!

[@edhead76]

i was getting bored with the staticness of these two dimensional pages I was limited to. This blew my mind and I can't get over how simple it is to add some straightforward javascript to really bring the page to life. Thank you for putting this together!!

[@amineyoussefi5311]

Dude u litteraly juust raised a new path 4 me

[@ozzy2361]

Wow thank you so much for this. I am about to finish my web dev course in college and this gave me such a wider view of whats possible in web development! Gives me something to do during summer!

[@avatr7109]

Cna this get us a job

[@Blentux]

I almost cannot believe how easy this seems to be...awesome!

[@diddlybop]

This tutorial got me started with web animation, thanks for putting this out! Now I'm building with react and three-fiber, and it's all because I watched this video!

[@jurgvds]

When fireship makes a Tutorial on something it becomes official for me

[@minecrafthamody3082]

A truly masterpiece

[@dannx3144]

the way u explained it was so smooth, love this

[@TJames7869]

Dude this is exactly the tutorial ive been looking for, for so long. Thanks

[@fidgetymouse]

Amazing tutorial. I kinda went a bit overboard though and I spent a day rewriting Sebastian Lague's planet gen code to work with ThreeJS (pretty much only kept the methods for combining noise). Ended up having to learn glsl to make it work using a ShaderMaterial.

[@klutch4198]

YASSSSSS!!!!! THE BEST!!!!! 🔥🔥🔥

[@sarpedonmontecarlo8397]

This tut series are amazing, Your teaching style has a fresh vibe. The topic is amazing, creative in nature. Cheers!

[@Emileelime2]

I rarely go out anymore during the weekends. Not because of Covid but because of this channel. Love these videos! Keep up the good work!

[@boiimcfacto2364]

This might be weird, but I love how you use emojis throughout the video! Most tutorials seem too formal and don't really spark interest in the subject but the bright colours, emojis and (especially) your narration make the video all the more fun and interesting! Been subscribed for long, can't wait to see you hit a million subs soon :)

[@avatr7109]

why would be that weird *STAND BY YOUR CHOICE*

[@luimu]

zoomer moment

[@RealityRogue]

​@@avatr7109 A lot of older programmers feel like it has to be completely formal or else its not worth their time. You can easily spot these individuals because they will say things like "zoomer moment"

[@tanmay______]

1:12 ‘about as realistic as the official moon landings’ What’s that supposed to mean lol

[@zanarkandmusic]

Glad I'm not the only one who noticed that!

[@matisowagm]

Dont tell me this guy is a conspiracist

[@Mopark25]

@@matisowagm he's joking lol

[@arthureroberer]

from joke to joke the truth peeks out

[@shb8651]

1:09

[@DodaGarcia]

I didn’t think I could be a bigger fan of this channel, and then you bring up Blender 💘

[@Dracolmao_]

Wow, everyone makes it so hard, thanks for making an easy three.js tutorial man.

[@MobiusCoin]

Vite? At this point I'm going to have different tooling for every project I work on.

[@Lolztech]

idk what's happening but i cant follow half of the instructions here without something going wrong - Node JS isnt working as shown, the TextureLoader command is not recognizing the image path - perhaps this tutorial needs an update?

[@iba001]

You've got magical tendency to post a video about topics I was 🤔 about (threejs AND putting together a portfolio website). Never thought of combining both but you might be onto something!

[@TH3BADRO]

This is the most awesome tutorial I have seen about Three.js. Thank you !

[@juanloutech2864]

Very nice tutorial! It's interesting to feel it so natural when you have been doing 3D game dev before with something like Godot. Thanks man!

[@chickeninabox]

That's me.

[@abhiramsatpute]

People might need to do an `npm install` before the `npm run dev` at 2:48

[@crank9847]

I made it but i got an error anyways, that the "dev" script is missing

[@terrorwizard4055]

This is crazy !!! Expained very well. Need more tutorials on this.

[@mkm_]

I've always wanted to do stuff with webgl/threejs but it seemed so complicated. This might finally motivate me to try it out. So thanks!

[@skycrazyk]

It was really interesting! I thought programming 3D animations more difficult, but now I think I should try it

[@sebastianibe8147]

L l. L. Mmmm mmmmmmm/mmmmmm m. I. Öl oo. Öl l l. Lmm/mmmmmm n ooookoook ooookoook kmkkm/. Mmmmmmknlkkkkkkk. N. Kmkko l k o lol. I lol kkl OK kk OK. OK k l Oooooo9oooo oo oookooko I ooookoook k oo onooll ooonn9ooooo. Oo ooookoook and then I opened it to 0o9o9 ooooooooo9o9oo9ooo9999999 to make a good friend 0o9o9 Oooooo9oooo. Mm mmmom/. Mmmm/nnnnnmm0nnoo. O0 0 II ooo{oooooooo{oooo{{of oooooool. {{oooooo9o9oo9ooo9999999 nooooooo9o0o0okolooooooooioooo9olooo. Oooooo9oooo N no o. Poo. I. Poo {x9x69. 599m 5fk6f f6o t. Of Mo.. I o m fkfxtf. Zoom in oxft 6.oofkf6fktof.?!!. do..! Ox659. X. 5. 5otxof I. 5 of96fkkxmf o9fp6 9m5x.9x9.66o. Fkf o5fot. Fooxofkffofu. Click Click Click Click OK. Click This ist of. Kf.. F. on. on of. F.? Kfk. F.. It. CT.?! Tkxot9. T9f9 o6mffktk6kkf96. Too 6k from f9ckf mf96m96mcx9c9tofkfofoko. Okf I. I. Co.! Co. I. On ock. I. Co. Gott... Oof9. Fk59. C5l5ofk95kf9 95l!!!.?. 9!.?.

[@sebastianibe8147]

Momomm{mm mooooommm{

[@sebastianibe8147]

Oomo{m

[@sebastianibe8147]

Kmmömmmmmm{{kkk

[@sebastianibe8147]

Kmmömmmmmm{{kkkk

[@Flocksta]

“Beginner friendly” 😢

[@versatilevirtuoso1352]

So much information in just 15 mins. This is awesome!!!!

[@Steven-bd8mn]

Finally a good tutorial in three.js, I'm having a hard time diving in this one

[@spicybaguette7706]

You can improve the moon with something called triplanar mapping, which basically takes an image for the x, y, z planes and projects them on the sphere. When you blur the edges you can get a really nice texture.

[@mrmelon54]

"its about as realistic as the moon landings" me: but the moon landings were real?

[@kccupido3518]

@@mrmelon54 or was it? Hmmmmmmm

[@hurricanemeridian8712]

@@mrmelon54 That sentence got me too... bruh

[@nullbeyondo]

@@mrmelon54 He meant the footage of the moon landing cause it is low quality, not the landing itself. It should be obvious cause we talk about rendering in this video.

[@SimpleLangSolution]

Welp, there goes my weekend.

[@spectralquill1810]

Me too. Coder compulsiveness is itching again😅

[@SO-fb4ef]

This is the first thing I've seen that excites me about front end

[@WilliamMelton617]

Awesome video! I've really missed the longer and more in depth content

[@FahadAli-ot5kn]

Hit the subscribe button and smash like button he is really genious person ...if u can't learn anything that's not a problem but hid idea is cool...

[@peterferencz]

I literally just learnt about this framework a few days ago, and was wondering if someone has a tutorial for it

[@colton3507]

i am going to cry. this is beautiful

[@bwustinbweem]

Thank you!!!! I’m in a coding slump right now and I needed this!!

[@williamduncan7401]

The actual way to do this is record the 3D as a video and advance through the video with scroll. Why? - browser compatibility - no realtime rendering (compatibility with low spec devices) This is great if you want to code an online game, for which the user would understand a decent pc is required. But for a website meant to be opened by anyone... Imagine a recruiter opening your website on their 4GB ram i3 Windows 8 computer, they start lagging, they can't scroll because of lag, etc. Wouldn't be a pleasant experience. Hence you render the animation in advance, record it and put it in the background. Autoplay off, on scroll show next frame of the video. Note: this is not something that I invented, it's what popular websites (that require compatibility) use for fancier graphics. If all you wanna add to your website is something like a globe, it's probably alright, just beware that making a nice 3d scene might be too heavy for some of your visitors to handle.

[@Achelon]

I wonder if this really is a problem nowadays. I've been doing some stuff with the google 3d-viewer component and have not really had problems with cheap phones etc.

[@AlphaQup1597]

This is how i think too

[@ohs3099]

Great channel! Waiting for this tutorial for so long. ❤️

[@EngineerNick]

What's mindblowing is how concise you managed to make that :) ! My own introduction to threejs was a loooong and painful process.

[@Wolflund2012]

The moonlanding was real tho

[@aaxen7255]

Great tutorial, well explained. Question: where to host such a project? I'm assuming typical shared hosting doesn't support three.js ...?

[@red.46]

as long as the host supports a javascript website, you can use threejs. I use github pages to host my threejs website with react.

[@aaxen7255]

@@red.46 thank you

[@SapphireKR]

@@red.46 how do you do this? I have spent hours and hours trying to figure it out, if you could help I would really appreciate it!

[@bogdan07271997]

Great content my friend. Concise in information and extremely facile for learning. Keep up the good work!

[@Luisja_c]

you have no idea how much this helped, I always reference you in my projects, thanks for being my sensei

[@CarlitoProductions]

does it affect performance on the site in any way when navigating/scrolling? I was talking to a friend today about using ThreeJS and GLSL in a future project, and not sure how many models you can render on screen at a time with ThreeJS before it slows down visibly. Would love to know performance comparison of a site with and without rendered objects.

[@lucasjames8281]

Depends on the power of the clients machine id assume

[@jonasex3001]

"it doesn't look perfect but it's about as realistic as the official moon landz#&%" 😂😂

[@hrsh042]

Man i didn't took that jokingly

[@kevinmclarkey621]

ok boomer

[@mohbkhaled6051]

This is absolutely amazing it will add amazing new animations to my webpages absolutely love it

[@tomascalvo8]

It's amazing how much content there is in a sixteen-minute video.

[@louisconnors8616]

when running npm run dev, i get an error saying that vite cannot be found and worker_threads module cannot be found. Any one have a solution?

[@ricasfbp]

same problem :/

[@ricasfbp]

i might have found the answer, after running: npm init @vitejs/app You just run these 3 commands: cd (name of your project) npm install npm run dev

[@Golmixer]

@@ricasfbp thanks a lot!

[@juliandavidalfonsomoreno6798]

14:58 how did you do that? The way you show the actual grid in vs code 😧

[@MatiasDiezCanseco]

Mozilla Firefox has great visual feedback in the developer's tools. Check that out, you will find the grid helpers there. Don't know how to do it in vscode though.

[@mohammedjawahri5726]

leaving this here in case anyone replies with how lol

[@mr.hahamuffingobrr3613]

Could be wrong but I'm pretty sure that's added in post

[@nebulousnomad]

Firefox developer tools allows you to highlight grid and flexbox. You can find it on the far right when you focus on an element that has `display: flex or grid`.

[@reubenroy]

What absolute beasts Jeff and the Three.Js guys are!! Incredible!!

[@oscardosjb]

Thank you, I'm starting to learn this from now

[@Trixz-the]

I have a question. Must I install vite with react to use three.js?

[@salmanarshad8861]

No

[@salmanarshad8861]

Vite is optional

[@Fireship]

You don't need react. Vite is just an easy way to setup a project with NPM and hot module replacement, but it's not necessary.

[@Trixz-the]

Ok thankyou. 🙏

[@codelightsparkles2403]

But if you want to use react then there is package called react three fiber which is awesome