But why not use WebGL? It's widely available, more efficient, and can render at a much higher quality.

https://polycss.com/gallery/?model=2843066616

https://threejs.org/examples/#webgl_animation_multiple

Hi there! This is not trying to be a three.js replacement, scenes with huge polygon counts naturally should render in canvas.

For me, the interesting case is smaller low-poly or voxel scenes where loading a full 3D stack may be overkill, and where keeping the scene in DOM/CSS gives you easier integration with normal layout, styling, events, etc. Once you have the HTML, you don't even need to load the library to render a static model.

Also, part of the experiment is testing the browser’s limits and getting a clearer sense of where this approach works, where it breaks down, and what the tradeoffs are.

Cheers!

	▲	woodrowbarlow 29 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		ha, so you could run this on the server and send down a page with no javascript at all? (with, i assume, a static camera only.) that's fun. i mean, you could also just render the model to an image at that point, but still, this is neat.

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socalgal2 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Same thought. Even that simple Apple on the front pages runs < 60fps on my M1 Mac. Rendering 3D objects with CSS is like rendering Doom in Excel Cells. Yes, you can do it. No you should not do it except as a joke/curiosity.