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Anyone know any good Webgl 2D engines? I've been thinking about using a Webgl 3D engine like Copperlicht but this feels like using a bazooka to swat a fly. I'm mostly interested in using it to develop an RPG game.

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7 Answers 7

up vote 4 down vote accepted

Three.js is reasonably low level while still providing a scene graph.

There's a code example in the README: https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js#readme

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I'll check this one out and come back with the results... –  Thirlan May 1 '11 at 18:02
I decided to go with Three.js. Copperlicht requires you to use CopperCube and thus it is too proprietary and inflexible. GLGE was another I looked at but Three.js was was more popular so probably a better bet. I also found this blog which helped me get started, catchvar.com/threejs-game-overview-and-isometric-grid –  Thirlan Feb 5 '12 at 22:17

you could also try


It makes webGL super easy to use and is pretty speedy too.

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And it's horrible on so many levels. –  iccthedral Jan 27 at 6:15
I don't know if I am doing it wrong, but I drew a circle in Pixi and it was horrible. –  Cristian Garcia Apr 19 at 23:19
@iccthedral why is it horrible? cristian did you enable anti-aliasing? –  mattdlockyer Jul 7 at 16:44

the best 2D engine for WebGL is... WebGL!

seriously though. the only potentially 3D-related part of WebGL is the z-buffer stuff, and even then that's just down to the naming of the 'depthRange()' parameters. apart from that, WebGL is entirely 2D.

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what are you talking about? WebGL is a port of OpenGL ES in the web browser. WebGL pushes the work over to the GPU. It's not as if it's a 3d library built off of HTML web canvases. It's as 3D as 3D can get. –  Patrick Lorio Aug 26 '12 at 22:07
Just because WebGL is utilizing the GPU doesn't make it more 3D. As far as I understand Spongman is right that WebGL is actually pretty 2D and that the 3D is implemented outside of WebGL in the form of shaders. See this blog post for more info: games.greggman.com/game/webgl-fundamentals And btw, I'm aware that this question is kinda old but I came across it when searching. –  paldepind Sep 13 '12 at 15:36
Yeah, maybe the question wasn't specific enough looking back on it. What I was hoping was an engine that gave a lot of the basic game tools one would expect such as camera movement, importing meshes, etc... Kind of like what Unity does right now for webgames. –  Thirlan Sep 19 '12 at 14:56

CAAT http://labs.hyperandroid.com/static/caat/ is able to render using Canvas, WebGL and CSS with the same code base. Demo: http://labs.hyperandroid.com/static/CAAT-Samples/demos/demo1/path.html

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I recently pushed this to github: https://github.com/funkaster/ChesterGL - check the online tests for a demo. It also has canvas fallback when there's no webgl support (note: it's still a work in progress)

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You can use a 3D engine as a 2D engine, by passing it coordinates with z=0, and only 2D transforms.

So three.js and processing.js are options.

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Right, I'm aware of that but was hoping to find libraries that were optimized for this by specializing in 2D. In the end however I decided it was better for my future plans to start with a 3D engine in the first place. –  Thirlan Apr 9 '12 at 13:06

I have published my own library, called IvanK lib. It has all the basic tools for 2D graphics. Still haven't found anything simplier or faster :)

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