Authoring Custom GLSL Shaders for CAD and Technical WebGL Applications
Techniques for dynamic plane clipping, screen-space antialiased wireframes, and false-color stress analysis visualization in web browsers.
Standard PBR materials are insufficient for engineering interfaces. Custom GLSL shaders allow developers to implement section views, measurement overlays, and structural stress gradients directly on the GPU.
1. Dynamic Section Clipping Planes in Fragment Shaders
By passing arbitrary plane equations to fragment shaders, custom discard logic clips geometry in real time without mutating underlying vertex attributes or mesh buffers.
2. Screen-Space Antialiased Wireframe Rendering
Using barycentric coordinates calculated during vertex shading, fragment shaders can draw resolution-independent outline strokes over 3D surfaces without requiring separate line geometry.
3. FEA Stress & Deferment Color Mapping
Mapping scalar engineering data arrays to custom color ramp textures enables real-time visualization of structural Finite Element Analysis (FEA) results directly on target 3D meshes.