Unless one has been rendering into the wrong framebuffer for the past few months, the news of the very first Three.js Conference, set to take place in Paris this September, has likely reached the global web development community. This landmark event marks a significant milestone for a technology that has been instrumental in shaping the landscape of interactive 3D on the web for nearly fifteen years.
For over a decade, Three.js has served as the foundational library for countless groundbreaking experiments, immersive portfolio sites, intricate installations, engaging games, powerful open-source tools, and captivating digital explorations. Its accessibility and robust feature set have empowered a generation of creative developers, enabling them to push the boundaries of what is possible within a browser environment. Now, for the first time, this diverse and vibrant community is converging in one physical location to celebrate its achievements, share knowledge, and collectively envision the future of web-based 3D graphics.
A Decade of Innovation: The Rise of Three.js
Three.js, an open-source JavaScript library, was initially released in April 2010 by Ricardo Cabello, also known as Mr.doob. Its creation addressed a critical need: simplifying the complexities of WebGL, the low-level API for rendering interactive 2D and 3D graphics within any compatible web browser without the use of plug-ins. Before Three.js, developing sophisticated 3D web experiences required deep understanding of WebGL’s intricacies, often proving to be a barrier for many developers and designers.
Three.js abstracted much of this complexity, providing a high-level API that made it significantly easier to create, animate, and render 3D scenes. Its impact was immediate and profound, democratizing 3D web development and fostering an explosion of creativity. Over the years, Three.js has continually evolved, incorporating new features, optimizing performance, and adapting to emerging web standards. Key milestones include the introduction of various renderers (WebGLRenderer, SVGRenderer, CSS3DRenderer), extensive geometry and material libraries, and a thriving ecosystem of extensions and helper tools. The library’s permissive MIT license further encouraged widespread adoption and contribution, solidifying its position as the de facto standard for web 3D. The community’s growth has been organic and fervent, driven by passionate developers, artists, and educators who have built upon the library to create everything from stunning data visualizations to complex virtual reality experiences.
The Conference: A Nexus for the Community
The decision to host the inaugural Three.js Conference in Paris reflects the growing maturity and global reach of the Three.js ecosystem. Organized by key figures within the community, including David Ronai who previously provided a behind-the-scenes look at the conference website’s dynamic, sphere-based design, the event promises to be a comprehensive showcase of current trends, technical advancements, and future possibilities. The conference aims to bring together maintainers, core contributors, framework authors (such as those behind React Three Fiber), and application developers, offering a unique platform for networking, collaboration, and collective learning.
Attendees can expect a rich program encompassing a wide array of topics crucial to modern web 3D development. These include, but are not limited to, the intricacies of WebGPU implementation, advanced rendering techniques, performance optimization strategies, creative shader development, the integration of AI and machine learning into 3D pipelines, accessibility best practices for interactive experiences, and innovative applications in fields such as e-commerce, architectural visualization, digital art, and gaming. The conference serves as an essential forum for sharing practical insights, celebrating artistic expression, and discussing the future trajectory of real-time 3D on the open web.
For those eager to attend, a partnership with Codrops offers readers a 15% discount on tickets using the code CODROPS. This incentive underscores the collaborative spirit permeating the Three.js community, encouraging broader participation in this seminal event.
Voices from the Forefront: A Glimpse into Speaker Innovations
The lineup of speakers at the Three.js Conference reads like a who’s who of web 3D pioneers, each bringing a unique perspective and area of expertise. We’ve gathered insights from a selection of these luminaries, revealing their current obsessions, recent projects, and what they are most eager to share in Paris.
Bruno Simon: Pioneering with TSL and WebGPU
For Bruno Simon, a prominent figure in the Three.js educational sphere through his "Three.js Journey" course, recent months have been dominated by the Three.js Shading Language (TSL) and WebGPU. He is currently immersed in developing the largest WebGPU update for his course, a monumental undertaking that he describes as "going to be huge!" TSL represents a significant evolution in shader authoring within Three.js, offering a more intuitive and powerful way to create complex visual effects directly within JavaScript, while WebGPU promises substantial performance improvements and new rendering capabilities for the web.
Bruno’s dedication to teaching TSL has meant daily hands-on experimentation, leading him to rebuild his entire portfolio as a dedicated playground for these new technologies. One particular experiment, shared on X, began as a simple concept and evolved into an obsession: glowing spheres driven by real physics, converting kinetic energy into heat. This detail, "just some nerd stuff that makes me smile," exemplifies his passion for blending technical rigor with playful aesthetics. His conference teaser, a single palm tree emoji (🌴), hints at a talk that will likely combine his deep technical knowledge with a touch of his characteristic whimsical style, potentially exploring new horizons unlocked by TSL and WebGPU.
Célia Lopez: Bridging AI, 3D, and Craft
Célia Lopez, a 3D designer specializing in WebGL at OFF+BRAND, embodies a spirit of relentless curiosity. Her work consistently pushes her to explore new techniques and optimize workflows. Lately, her focus has gravitated towards artificial intelligence, specifically its applications in 3D design. She’s delving into non-linear texture optimization and the complex process of transferring textures from AI-generated models, which often have messy topology, onto clean, production-ready meshes. This exploration is critical for understanding how AI-generated assets can be seamlessly integrated into high-quality real-time 3D experiences, addressing a key challenge in leveraging AI for professional pipelines.
Beyond the digital realm, Célia has embarked on a new creative venture: launching her own ceramics brand, crafting handmade bowls and cups. This foray into physical craft highlights a growing trend among digital artists to explore tangible forms of expression, finding new rhythms and satisfaction in hands-on creation. She recently shared her AI experiments at the Paris Design Meetup, presenting a refined workflow that demonstrates practical applications of AI in design. In Paris, Célia promises "a little part might be unexpected," but her primary excitement lies in the communal aspect. She finds WebGL conferences uniquely fulfilling, valuing the opportunity to learn new technical workflows, exchange ideas with peers, and experience moments of shared passion, dancing, and laughter that transcend everyday life.
Daniel Beauchamp: Personalization and AI in Digital Experiences
Daniel Beauchamp’s current focus spans two seemingly disparate yet deeply connected domains: interactive product customization for e-commerce and AI-generated commercials and brand films. Both areas, he notes, seek to answer the fundamental question of how digital experiences can be made more personal, expressive, and memorable. This dual curiosity has materialized into two new ventures. He is developing a Shopify app that integrates Rive to bring rich, interactive product customization to merchants, empowering consumers to truly "experience" a product before purchase. Simultaneously, he is pioneering an AI commercial video-as-a-service offering, leveraging generative AI to create engaging brand narratives.
Whether through a product configurator or an AI-crafted brand film, Daniel’s overarching goal remains consistent: to create experiences that actively invite engagement rather than passive consumption. In Paris, he will elaborate on how interactive product experiences can transform customization from a mere feature into an emotional journey, allowing users to connect deeply with a product through beautiful, meaningful interactions. His most valuable "treasure" from his creative journey is not a specific technique but a mindset: "Keep building, and at the same time keep exploring, learning, changing, and re-examining both the process and the things I make." This philosophy underscores the iterative and adaptive nature of innovation in the rapidly evolving tech landscape.
Anderson Mancini: Pushing Real-time Rendering with WebGPU
For Anderson Mancini, WebGPU represents more than just an upgrade; it’s a paradigm shift, an opportunity to redefine the boundaries of real-time rendering within the browser. He is actively revisiting projects previously deemed too computationally expensive for real-time execution, now leveraging modern rendering techniques powered by WebGPU to achieve higher visual fidelity and broader accessibility.
His recent work has concentrated on combining Screen Space Global Illumination (SSGI) and Screen Space Reflections (SSR) to elevate architectural visualization. These advanced rendering techniques are crucial for bringing photorealistic lighting and reflections to the real estate industry, enabling highly immersive virtual tours and design presentations. Complementing his rendering research, Anderson has released r3f-webgpu-perf, a performance monitoring tool for React Three Fiber (R3F). This tool goes beyond mere number display, offering real-time guidance and actionable insights for optimization, effectively distilling years of his game development experience into an invaluable resource for the community. In Paris, he will dissect two of his recent projects, Lumen Decor Studio and CerealBNB, sharing the underlying techniques and the invaluable lessons transposed from game development, promising practical strategies for building high-performance Three.js experiences without compromising artistic ambition.
Natalia Markoborodova & Thomas Nattestad: Shaping the Web with HTML-in-Canvas
At Google Chrome, Thomas Nattestad and Natalia Markoborodova are at the forefront of shaping the web’s future, with a significant portion of their efforts centered on the innovative HTML-in-Canvas API. Thomas views this API as having "enormous creative potential," but also acknowledges the inherent challenges of developing new web standards. His work involves meticulously balancing the "unbelievable excitement" generated by developer creations with the imperative to advance browsers while safeguarding privacy, security, and interoperability – core tenets of the open web. He has been instrumental in introducing the HTML-in-Canvas API through Google I/O’s Chrome for Developers sessions, demonstrating how semantic HTML can be rendered directly within a canvas, maintaining full interactivity and accessibility, a game-changer for complex UI within 3D scenes.
Natalia, meanwhile, delves into the API’s granular details, exploring color spaces, display rendering, and cross-setup testing to refine its implementation. Her work on a "color space comparison demo" originated from a serendipitous observation: "I simply embedded a video, and its colors seemed off." This seemingly minor detail led her down a rabbit hole of color formats and browser rendering, exemplifying how critical deep technical investigation is for robust platform development. In Paris, they will offer complementary perspectives on HTML-in-Canvas. Thomas will explore its potential to fundamentally expand web creativity, injecting "a heavy amount of whimsy," while Natalia will demonstrate its dual nature as both "FUN & FUNctional!", showcasing how playful interactions and rigorous engineering can harmoniously coexist.
Patrick Heng & Justine Soulié: The Art of Creative Ping Pong
Patrick Heng and Justine Soulié find their inspiration in the boundless experimentation of the web, drawn to creators who push boundaries for the sheer joy of discovery. This spirit permeates their own work, where they masterfully blend interactivity, technical innovation, and illustration into captivating, playful experiences. Their creative process is characterized by a dynamic "creative ping pong," a continuous exchange between illustration and development. "A sketch can inspire an interaction, and an interaction can inspire a new visual idea," they explain, highlighting the symbiotic relationship between their disciplines.
Lately, this collaborative synergy has manifested in transforming Justine’s illustrations into small interactive games, enhanced by experiments with MediaPipe and hand tracking to imbue these digital worlds with a more tactile and responsive feel. In Paris, they will offer a behind-the-scenes look at their acclaimed interactive WebGL comic, Ponpon Mania. Their presentation will serve as both a creative case study and a technical deep dive, illustrating how illustration, storytelling, and real-time graphics converge to create a uniquely engaging experience, showcasing the powerful outcomes when two distinct creative disciplines continually inspire and challenge each other.
Robin Payot: AI, Three.js, and the Fundamentals of Web Development
Robin Payot’s mind is currently occupied by two vastly different, yet equally impactful, forces: the joyous arrival of his six-week-old daughter and the rapid, transformative influence of AI on web development. While eagerly anticipating his daughter’s first words, he observes with fascination how AI coding assistants are enabling designers at his company to ship production code, a scenario that "would have seemed unimaginable" just two years prior. Despite this rapid advancement, Robin firmly believes that the fundamentals remain paramount. "You still need to have a solid understanding of the web’s limitations and, at the very least, understand how the code works and what it does," he asserts, emphasizing the critical role of foundational knowledge even in an AI-augmented world.
This fascination with AI recently led to an intriguing experiment: a Three.js animation that reacts in real-time to the voice of an AI assistant. Built with React Three Fiber (R3F) and "a little help from AI," this project allowed him to engage in conversations with a chatbot and observe his shaders dynamically respond to different voices, accents, and speaking styles – a compelling fusion of generative art and real-time audio analysis. In Paris, Robin will share how AI, Three.js, and a touch of Zelda inspiration converged in his latest personal project. His journey with AI has also yielded memorable moments, including a particularly stubborn Claude session that humorously reminded him that some bugs still require direct human intervention.
Julie Marting: Designing Playful Identities and Embracing Mistakes
Julie Marting’s creative energies extend beyond the screen, currently encompassing the decoration of a new apartment and extensive experimentation with AI tools for design. This dual focus highlights a broader contemplation of spaces, both physical and digital. She is keenly exploring how AI can facilitate prototyping ideas and infuse vitality into her designs, approaching this unfamiliar territory with a spirit of open curiosity.
Her recent explorations include an AI-powered tool for creating real-time 3D videos for social media. While acknowledging that "it doesn’t make sense at first," she found precisely that incongruity made the exploration enjoyable and insightful. In Paris, Julie will offer an exclusive look behind the curtain at the design and art direction of the Three.js Conference website itself, sharing the creative decisions, clever tricks, and subtle secrets that sculpted its distinctive playful identity. A core lesson she consistently returns to is the transformative power of error: "Making mistakes and discovering new ideas or techniques as a result of those mistakes is almost part of our weekly routine as designers. It encourages us to constantly learn and try new things we hadn’t thought of before." This philosophy underscores the iterative and experimental nature of design innovation.
Vicente Lucendo: Emotion as a Compass in Interactive Design
Vicente Lucendo draws inspiration from an eclectic array of sources. Lately, he has been captivated by the dynamic panel compositions of manga artist Yusuke Murata, studying how motion can be powerfully conveyed within a static image. Equally, he finds aesthetic resonance in time-worn structures, observing the unique atmosphere they create when juxtaposed with modern architecture and everyday life. This keen eye for movement and atmospheric detail extends into his technological explorations. Vicente has been experimenting with various physics engines, ultimately finding a strong preference for Jolt, which he believes "should be more popular!"
In Paris, Vicente will guide attendees through the creative and technical journey behind his project, Messenger, emphasizing that such endeavors are rarely linear. He advocates for an "emotional compass" – allowing the desired emotion to guide every technical and creative decision throughout the development process. This philosophy also shapes his personal workflow: "I make a conscious effort to regularly view my work with fresh eyes," he explains. Whether seeking candid feedback from teammates or taking a deliberate break from a project, creating a little distance often reveals solutions that were previously obscured, underscoring the value of perspective in problem-solving.
Jean Carlo Deconto (sunag): Mastering TSL and Future Rendering Pipelines
For Jean Carlo Deconto, known as sunag in the community, the Three.js Shading Language (TSL) is currently his primary intellectual focus. He has meticulously revisited TSL’s documentation and syntax from the ground up, culminating in the creation of "Tour of TSL," a comprehensive guide designed to empower developers with a deeper understanding of the language and its expanding ecosystem. Through this process, he also aims to contribute to the refinement of TSL’s syntax and implementation ahead of his highly anticipated presentation in Paris.
His recent experiments span some of the most cutting-edge frontiers of the Three.js ecosystem. These include significant improvements to the Three.js Inspector, explorations into nanite-style rendering (a technique for rendering highly detailed geometry efficiently), fire simulations utilizing voxel grids, and contributions to deferred rendering for an upcoming Three.js release. Jean’s work consistently explores the limits of what the rendering pipeline can achieve next. In Paris, he will lead attendees on his "Tour of TSL," highlighting the substantial benefits the language brings to modern Three.js development. Underlying all his technical contributions is a fundamental engineering philosophy: "One of the most important things for me is trying to separate the responsibilities of each part of the software to build systems that can be extended individually." This modular approach is key to building scalable and maintainable complex 3D applications.
The Broader Impact: A Maturing Ecosystem and Future Horizons
The inaugural Three.js Conference in Paris signifies more than just a gathering; it represents a coming-of-age for the web 3D community. For nearly 15 years, Three.js has powered a silent revolution in browser-based graphics, quietly enabling rich, interactive experiences across diverse sectors. This conference formalizes and elevates that achievement, providing a dedicated space for the innovators who have driven this progress.
The insights shared by these speakers underscore several key trends shaping the future of web 3D. The emergence of WebGPU, coupled with advanced shading languages like TSL, promises a new era of performance and visual fidelity previously unattainable on the web. The pervasive influence of AI is evident across design, development workflows, and content generation, indicating a future where generative tools and intelligent assistants will become integral to the creative process. Furthermore, the emphasis on interactive product experiences, architectural visualization, and engaging storytelling highlights the growing commercial and artistic applications of Three.js beyond traditional gaming.
This event also reinforces the critical role of open-source communities in driving technological advancement. The collaborative spirit, the willingness to share knowledge, and the collective passion for pushing boundaries are the bedrock upon which Three.js has thrived. The conference, therefore, is not merely a showcase of current capabilities but a catalyst for future innovation, fostering connections and sparking ideas that will undoubtedly shape the next decade of interactive web experiences.
See Them (and Many More) in Paris
These remarkable individuals represent just a fraction of the talent converging for the very first Three.js Conference. Over two days in the heart of Paris, the global Three.js community will unite to exchange ideas, showcase cutting-edge demos, explore experimental concepts, conduct deep technical dives, recount happy accidents, and perhaps even discuss a few bugs that deserve their own dedicated talks. This gathering is set to be an unparalleled opportunity for learning, networking, and celebrating the vibrant world of web 3D.
For those ready to join this historic convergence of creativity and technology, the opportunity remains open. Utilize the code CODROPS to secure a 15% discount on your ticket, and be part of a landmark event that will undoubtedly shape the future of interactive 3D on the web.
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