How to render three.js server-side?

Question

How can I render three.js server side? At the moment our website renders player avatars using three.js locally, however that issues security things as well as potential bugs with people with less-end computers (people can inject the code into console and have it render god knows what..)

I looked into using node.js but all documentation on that is vague and appears to be quite outdated..

Any help would be useful

Current local: http://pastebin.com/yv5Qamfz

Solution

There are several discussions about using three.js on node.js on the three.js GitHub page. Check for example:

• Use Three.js functions in node.js
• node.js server rendering with node-webgl and/or headless-gl

There is also this question on stackoverflow which could be considered a duplicate of your question.

This one is dealing with a project called node-three.js on GitHub. It will support rendering in three.js on node.js. Not sure if it does exactly what you want (I have no first hand experience with this library) but worth checking it out I guess.

Comments

[Sean3z]

People will always be able to open their console and have the ability to "render god knows what". three.js is a client side library. Even if you dynamically generate markup server-side, the code will still be executed client-side. Also, node.js documentation is generally always up to date.

[JanR]

You could write something that renders the model serverside and somehow streams it to the front-end, but I reckon you are better off just using three.js clientside as intended

[B''H Bi'ezras -- Boruch Hashem]

Even if its in a hidden div, any client could make a browser extension that injects code into that div