API

Learning The Docs

How It's Organized

Having started your journey and having an overview of Babylon.js, the documentation is designed to take you step by step further on the journey of mastering all that this platform has to offer. The information is organized into an overview and 6 main sections, which contain chapters, together with a detailed API section, and search facilities.

  1. Workflow - There are a variety of ways to deal with the workflow when developing a Babylon.js project. This section will help you to understand the possibilities and provides you with some templates and support for doing so.
  2. Features - Babylon.js has a wide range of features. This section takes you through these features and helps you to , code and build with them.
  3. Tools And Resources - Babylon.js has many incredible tools to make the development process simple and enjoyable. It also has several libraries of content available for you to use completely for free. This section will help you understand and leverage both.
  4. Guided Learning - Sometimes it's best to learn while doing. This section helps you do just that. These step by step articles and tutorials will help you learn from some of the communities best and brightest teachers.
  5. Playground - A detailed look at the central Babylon.js resource, how to use it and the many facilities it has to offer, including the ability to search all the playgrounds.
  6. Contribute - For those of you who want to expand the boundaries of Babylon.js this section describes what is needed and how to contribute to both the code base of Babylon.js and its documentation.

*. API - For the most seasoned Babylon.js developers, those who want to understand every single possible super power available, the API meticulously documents every corner of this fantastic platform.

Workflow

The chapters in this section are:

  1. Starter HTML Template - A basic HTML template encompassing Babylon.js necessary scene and engine code and a description of it. How to obtain the scene code from a playground.
  2. Templates - Simple and more complex templates for your projects.
  3. Framework Packages - A description of the CND, NPM and ES6 packages for Babylon.js, their history and help in choosing which to use.
  4. Exporters - A range of 3D graphic software that can export files in a form that Babylon.js can import together with hints and tips on getting the best from the export.
  5. Support - A range of support including for local and other servers, Visual Studio Code and WebGU.
  6. External Libraries - Descriptions of how to use some third party libraries with Babylon.js

Features

  1. Starter Scene Code - How to construct a scene in Babylon.js. Examples are provided using the playground.
  2. Introduction - This section is designed to take you on a step by step journey of scratching the surface of Babylon.js and everything it has to offer.
  3. Diving Deeper - Organized by feature, this section will help you take the next step, expand on your knowledge of the platform, and give you a solid understanding of the depth of possibilties in the engine.

How To Use The Documentation

Babylon.js is a rich API designed to make it as easy as possible to leverage the power of the GPU for your web experience. You can leverage this powerful API by writing Babylon.js scene code in either javascript or typescript. For the purposes of consistency and maximizing accessibility of the documentation, all example code found in these pages will be provided in javascript.

The documentation page layout has several features that you'll want to know about in order to get the most out of your learning journey.

To start, the left most panel is the navigation pane. This pane is how you navigate to where you'd like to go.

Navigation Pane

Next is the content pane. It's in the middle, and you guessed it, it contains the main content and information.

Content Pane

Some pages have a lot of information that's organized into sub sections. The table of contents pane makes it easy to navigate lengthier pages.

Table of Contents

The panel on the right is the examples pane. It provides quick access to every playground (live examples) on the current page.

Examples Pane

Lastly, if you select any one of the examples in the examples pane, it will load that example inside of the playground pane at the top of the page content.

Examples Pane

A Note on Versioning

The Babylon.js Documentation is written with the latest major version of Babylon.js in mind. The API docs are generated against the latest nightly build.

If you want to install Babylon.js locally using the latest version, please pick the latest release from the npm page, and then run:

npm i @babylonjs/core@preview

Don't be scared about using the latest version. Babylon's npm releases are considered stable and are fully tested by the team.