"Rendering Tale:

Comparing SVG, Canvas, WebGL (and CSS)

@vincentntang : twitter

About Me

Some clients

Work

<disclaimer>

Fundamentals

Showcase Examples

Why?

Web makes communication standards easier

The ones that do it best have

great UX design and Animations

mastery requires knowledge in:

SVG, Canvas, WebGL (and CSS)

Software solves problems

...opens oppurtunities for bigger, meaningful projects (dev/agency).

Goal of Talk

SVG, Canvas, WebGL
Low Level
High Level
Examples (Business, Practical)
Tooling
Performance
<disclaimer>

Creative Agency
Tooling Visualization

Images Vs Vectors

Canvas

One DOM Element
Requires Javascript
Raster Based
Animate by calling a function
Not portable

SVG

Multiple DOM Elements
Does not require javascript
Vector Based
Animate by modifying it's DOM attribute
Very portable, copy paste HTML

When to use SVG?

Copypaste SVG assets from https://www.flaticon.com/ instead of fontawesome
Don't want to use CSS sprites on a page
Don't want to use images
Need to make a simple CRUD app
Using something like d3.js for data viz
Don't mind using the extra HTML markup

Canvas+SVG

Open maps
https://tympanus.net/codrops/2015/12/16/animated-map-path-for-interactive-storytelling/

SVG

SVG is an XML based vector image format for 2-dimension graphics with support for interactivity and animation. SVG specification was developed by W3C in 1999

- Wikipedia

Scalable Vector Graphics

Can be rendered in any size and resolution

Comprised of vectors drawn with strokes and fill

graphics

Bitmap vs SVG

SVG are native markup documents written in native webcode

SVGs are styled with CSS and controlled by Javascript

SVG is standard graphics format

Create and edit SVG in sketch, adobe illustrator, etc
Display SVG in image viewers and web browsers
SVG is an open format you can use as any vector based graphic - not limited to just web graphics

⌘

Pros

Pros:

Scales on any display
Less HTTP requests to handle
Small file size
Many ways to animate
Its just HTML markup
Portable
Data Visualization

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" 
x="0px" y="0px" width="450px" height="100px" viewBox="0 0 450 100">
 <rect x="10" y="5" fill="white" stroke="black" width="90" height="90"/>
 <circle fill="white" stroke="black" cx="170" cy="50" r="45"/>
 <polygon fill="white" stroke="black" points="279,5 294,35 328,40 303,62 309,94 
279,79 248,94 254,62 230,39 263,35 "/>
 <line fill="none" stroke="black" x1="410" y1="95" x2="440" y2="6"/>
 <line fill="none" stroke="black" x1="360" y1="6" x2="360" y2="95"/>
</svg>

3 Ways to use SVG

Inline
Embedded with CSS background
Image `src`

Animating in VanillaJS


    //  Returns the bezier points for a smile. Scale is 0-1.
      function smilePoints(scale) {
        const factor = scale * 2 - 1; // i.e sad = -1, happy = +1
        const p1 = { x: -20, y: -10 * factor };
        const c1 = { x: -20, y: 10 * factor };
        const p2 = { x: 20, y: -10 * factor };
        const c2 = { x: 20, y: 10 * factor };
        return [p1, c1, c2, p2];
      }

      function writeSmilePoints(points) {
        console.log(points);
        const p = p => `${p.x},${p.y}`; // write a point as a coord
        return `M${p(points[0])} C${p(points[1])} ${p(points[2])} ${p(
          points[3]
        )}`;
      }

      function scaleSmile(scale) {
        //  Get the geometry of the new smile.
        const points = writeSmilePoints(smilePoints(scale));
        const svg = document.getElementById("svg");

        //  Create the geometry animation, which will look summat like this:
        //  <animate attributeName="d" attributeType="XML"
        //    to="M-20,10 C-20,-10 20,-10 20,10" dur="3s" repeatCount="indefinite"
        //    fill="freeze" />
        const smilePath = document.getElementById("smilepath");
        const animate = document.createElementNS(svg.namespaceURI, "animate");
        animate.setAttribute("attributeName", "d");
        animate.setAttribute("attributeType", "XML");
        animate.setAttribute("to", points);
        animate.setAttribute("dur", "0.3s");
        animate.setAttribute("repeatCount", "1");
        animate.setAttribute("fill", "freeze");
        smilePath.appendChild(animate);
        animate.beginElement();
      }

      function onChange() {
        //  Get the slider value, scale it from percentage to 0-1.
        const val = this.value;
        const scale = parseInt(val, 10) / 100;
        scaleSmile(scale);
      }

      <svg id="svg" viewbox="0 0 120 120">
        <g id="face" transform="translate(60 60)">
          <!-- Yellow Background-->
          <circle
            id="facecircle"
            cx="0"
            cy="0"
            r="50"
            stroke="#000000"
            stroke-width="2"
            fill="#FAD257"
          />
          <!-- Left Eye, Right Eye-->
          <circle cx="-20" cy="-10" r="5" fill="#000000" />
          <circle cx="20" cy="-10" r="5" fill="#000000" />
          <!-- Smile -->
          <g id="smile" transform="translate(0, 25)">
            <path
              id="smilepath"
              fill="none"
              stroke="#000000"
              stroke-width="3"
              stroke-linecap="round"
              d="M-20,-10 C-20,10 20,10 20,-10"
            />
          </g>
        </g>
      </svg>

Hand Code

From Adobe Illustrator, Sketch, etc

JS Library - e.g. Anime.js

3 ways to animate SVGs

Transition / states
CSS Keyframes / Animation
JS to manipulate `attr` data

SMIL

tanuki-nose {
  fill: #e24329;
  transition: all 0.8s;
}
.tanuki-nose:hover {
  fill: #f1a699;
  transition: all 0.1s;
}

svg {
  animation: grow 5s infinite;
}
@keyframes grow {
  50% {
    transform: scale(1.5);
  }
}

1. Starting State

2. Ending State

3. Use a library

SVG Animating Tools

- Adobe AfterEffects + Plugin (Lottie, BodyMoving)

AfterEffects + Lottie

SVGator

SVG tool for one-time CSS Animations

AE / Lottie

6 kB

Native SVG

~200 kB minified per graphic

SVGator

~32 kB minified

One-time CSS Keyframe

Gifs

300kB to 10mb

Can set loop amount

pen by sarah drasner

Examples
d3.js

MIT Scratch

SVG Assets to download

https://www.flaticon.com/

HTML Canvas

What is it?

- 2011 HTML5 spec, for drawing graphics on a screen

Can I Use?

WebGL

Javascript API that enables creation and display of 3D content inside browser using GPU (Graphical processing unit)

Works in all modern browsers
Low level API

CanIuse?

WebGL

A javascript API that enables creation and display of 3D content inside browser using the graphical processing unit (GPU)

Low Level API

var gl = canvas.getContext("webgl2");

HTML, CSS, Javascript

ThreeJS

Opensource Javascript library that abstracts complexity of webGL for 3D content, making things easier to manage

Handles linear algebra / matrix-math behind scenes

Hello world WebGL

How it works

Hello World WebGL

How it works

ThreeJS

Examples

Water
Oil Map - Data Viz
Car Video

1. Scene

2. Camera

3. Renderer

4. Mesh

6. Material

5. Geometry

7. Lights

Scene Graph

Introduction to Three.js

Breakdown

//FoV, aspect, near, far
var camera = new THREE.PerspectiveCamera(
  75, 
  window.innerWidth/window.innerHeight, 
  0.1, 
  1000
);

camera.position.z = 100;

var renderer = new THREE.WebGLRenderer();
renderer.setSize( window.innerWidth, window.innerHeight );
document.body.appendChild( renderer.domElement );

var geometry = new THREE.BoxGeometry(20, 20, 20);
var material = new THREE.MeshLambertMaterial({color: 0xfd59d7});
var cube = new THREE.Mesh(geometry, material);
scene.add(cube);

var light = new THREE.PointLight(0xFFFF00);
light.position.set(10, 0, 25);
scene.add(light);

var scene = new THREE.Scene();

By Dennis Gaebel.

Loading the data

  // Sets up the scene.
  function init() {

    // Code from previous steps goes here...

    // Load in the mesh and add it to the scene.
    var loader = new THREE.JSONLoader();
    loader.load( "models/treehouse_logo.js", function(geometry){
      var material = new THREE.MeshLambertMaterial({color: 0x55B663});
      mesh = new THREE.Mesh(geometry, material);
      scene.add(mesh);
    });

    // More code goes here next...

  }

three.js examples

thingiverse
matterport
Figma
Lucidchart
Arcentry - Three.js + vue
Google Earth
Mapbox
Panic Transmit
A-Frame (VR Mozilla)
Pottermore Hogwarts

ThreeJs ExampleFusion360

Pixi.js

http://ellcreative.com/

OTHER

Simple UX and animation effects

CSS, simple JS, and images, etc

CSS Sprites

10 kb
More performant to group many icons over many small SVGs
Spritecow.com
Ecommerce

Drag and Drop

Parallax

CSS Positioning and Javascript

Fonts and Emojis ⚡

52 kB

Summary

Which tech to use?

WebGL

Shader + lighting support
3D + camera
Three.js
Pixi.js

Canvas

Physics Demo
A lot of items on screen
WebGL fallback

OTHER

CSS Sprites
Drag and Drop
Parallax
FontAwesome
CSS Positioning
CSS Transforms
Reveal.JS
Animate.css

SVG

Compact
Portable
Flexible
Animatable
Just HTML / XML
Can do pretty much anything
Works with canvas/other

It depends.

check for edge cases first.

Cons of each

SVGs

Generally requires tooling
Performance issues with too many objects

Native WebGL2

A lot of boilerplate
Complex (GLSL code)
Requires GPU
Generally requires tooling

Canvas

Not portable
Most limited of 3 options (cannot use CSS on it, no shaders)

👋 Questions?

Combination Patterns

Canvas on top of Canvas - Earthcc
Canvas on top of WebGL (mapbox) - hoodmaps
SVG + Canvas for Maps
SVG with blurring / color effects on top of image
React/Vue/Angular as side menus / event listeners, canvas/webgl in center
HTML Canvas as fallback to webGL (e.g. pixi.js)

CSS

Position: absolute
Z-index

SVG Resources

Sarah Drasner's slides
Codrops SVG examples
CSS Tricks SVG articles
😊 Animating SVG with pure JS - 2018
Learning SVG - lynda.com + few others

Some Common Libraries

SVG.js
Snap.svg
D3.js
Mo.js
Anime.js
Morph SVG, DrawSVG, TweenMax (GSAP)
Embedded SVG using SCSS (sass-svg)

Tooling

Adobe Illustrator / Figma / etc
Flaticon
Drawing by hand
AfterEffects / Lottie
http://www.heropatterns.com/

Real World SVG Examples

Gitlab's Logo
Nuclino - AST mapping for notes
16 personalities - Static Logos
Curse.com - Animated logos
React Redux chrome extension tools
Graphviz / mermaidJS
Musicnotes.com
MIT Scratch / educational K-12 content
SVGator
2dimensions.com
https://d3js.org/
https://gannon.tv/work
https://css-tricks.com/what-is-svg-good-for/
https://codepen.io/collection/svfAa/10/
https://codepen.io/chriscoyier/pen/WRwxYO/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8EppLDkgtw

More Real World SVG

WebGL Resources

WebGL2 Fundamentals
Rachael Smith threejs intro
Red stapler threeJS tutorial
Learning Three.js - Lynda
Evan Wallace - WebGL water
https://www.iquilezles.org/www/index.htm

Libraries / Tooling

Three.JS (3D)
Pixi.JS (2D)
Phaser (2D games)
Blender / Maya / Etc
Unity /Unreal plugins

Deeper Dive in 3D without libraries

Khan Academy 3D shapes
UC SanDiego Computer Graphics in c/c++

Real World WebGL Examples

AutoCAD Fusion360 - Three.js
Thingiverse - Three.js
Figma
Lucidchart
Arcentry - Three.js + vue
Google Earth
Mapbox
Panic Transmit
A-Frame (VR Mozilla)
Pottermore Hogwarts
WebGL Water test
Matterport
https://2050.earth/
Oil Map
https://www.clicktorelease.com/code/cruciform/
https://renaultespace.littleworkshop.fr/

Anything found from these agencies

https://www.littleworkshop.fr/
https://www.epic.net/en
https://activetheory.net/work
https://threejs.org/docs/

Canvas Resources

Libraries

P5.js
Vanilla JS

Inspiration

Dwitter.net

Real World Canvas Examples

Remoteok.io - Work statistics
Reddit r/place - largest canvas experiment
Hoodmaps - Canvas overlay on a map
Freezeframe - Canvas image placeholder over gifs
Cambecc - Earth
Soundslice - WYISWYG music editor

(real world examples are hard to find)

Addional Resources Comparing Technologies

Figma 2015 webGL - Figma comparing feature sets for business tooling
2D - webGL vs canvas - 2014 stackoverflow
Comparison animation technologies - 2016 CSS tricks / Sarah Drasner

Examples that don't need webGL, SVG, or Canvas

Reveal.js / Slides.com
Drag and drop
Parallax
realthread.com (image overlay on T-shirts)

Animation Resources

Splitting.js

Anime.js 3.0 (really nice docs)

Comparing SVG, Canvas, WebGL, and CSS

By Vincent Tang

Comparing SVG, Canvas, WebGL, and CSS

What each of these are, and how they work

4,294

Vincent Tang

Fullstack Developer and cohost of CodeChefs

"Rendering Tale:

Comparing SVG, Canvas, WebGL (and CSS)

About Me

About Me

<disclaimer>

Why?

Goal of Talk

Images Vs Vectors

Canvas

SVG

When to use SVG?

Canvas+SVG

SVG

Scalable Vector Graphics

Bitmap vs SVG

SVG are native markup documents written in native webcode

SVGs are styled with CSS and controlled by Javascript

SVG is standard graphics format

⌘

Pros

3 Ways to use SVG

Animating in VanillaJS

JS Library - e.g. Anime.js

3 ways to animate SVGs

SVG Animating Tools

AfterEffects + Lottie

AfterEffects + Lottie

SVGator

AE / Lottie

Native SVG

SVGator

Gifs

Examples d3.js

HTML Canvas

HTML Canvas

Can I Use?

WebGL

WebGL

CanIuse?

WebGL

HTML, CSS, Javascript

ThreeJS

Hello world WebGL

How it works

Hello World WebGL

How it works

ThreeJS

Examples

Scene Graph

Introduction to Three.js

Breakdown

Loading the data

three.js examples

ThreeJs ExampleFusion360

Pixi.js

OTHER

CSS Sprites

Drag and Drop

Fonts and Emojis ⚡

Summary

Which tech to use?

Cons of each

👋 Questions?

Combination Patterns

Animation Resources

Comparing SVG, Canvas, WebGL, and CSS

More from Vincent Tang

Examples
d3.js