skice

A command-line tool for creative coding using HTML canvas. It helps to create and work with locally hosted projects for small experiments or large artworks. skice is heavily inspired by a similar but much more feature-rich tool called cvanvas-sketch. Unlike "canvas-sketch" it doesn't provide an abstraction layer and the code you write is directly sent to the browser as is.

Installation

npm install -g skice

Usage

skice <command> [<path>] [options...]

Commands

help, --help, -h

Outputs the help text either for skice or the specified command.

skice help

skice help run

version

Outputs the version number.

skice version

new

Creates a new sketch project.

skice new /path/to/sketch_project --context webgl

skice new /path/to/sketch_project --context 2d

run

Runs the project using a local server.

cd /path/to/sketch_project

skice run

skice run --port 8000

skice run --no-browser

upgrade

Upgrades the project from an older version.

skice upgrade /path/to/sketch_project --from 1.4.1 --context webgl

Configuration

Every project has a skice.config.json file in its root that you can use to change the configuration.

portNumber

Specifies the port number that is used by the local server. It can be overwritten with the command-line option --port.

watch

skice will automatically reload the browser when files in the project directory change. It's watching recursively all the files by default, but since it's using Node's file watcher API, it has some caveats that might prevent this functionality from working properly on your system. One way to mitigate certain issues is to add a list of files that need to be watched using watch configuration option.

{
  "skiceVersion": "2.1.0",
  "portNumber": 3000,
  "watch": [
    "index.html",
    "js/skice.js"
  ]
}

The file paths must be relative to the root directory.

Canvas settings

skice projects have access to CanvasSettings class which provides some useful functionality like automatic resizing and image export.

CanvasSettings#width

The width of the canvas element. It will change automatically when the browser window gets smaller than this value.

CanvasSettings#height

The height of the canvas element. It will change automatically when the browser window gets smaller than this value.

CanvasSettings#exportAs

The export format. The default is image.

Possible values:

• image (exports as a PNG file)
• video/* (* can be any video format supported by the browser, e.g., video/webm)

CanvasSettings#duration

The duration of the video file if a video format is used for the exportAs setting. It must be in milliseconds. The default value is 5000.

CanvasSettings#enableExport()

Enables exporting canvas in the specified format using a keyboard shortcut Ctrl+S.

const canvasSettings = new CanvasSettings()

canvasSettings.enableExport(canvas, renderer, scene, camera)

network module

This module provides convenience function for working with network requests.

Available functions:

• importPlainText(url: string): Promise - loads a plain text file. It can be useful for importing GLSL files.

Upgrading from 1.4.1 to 2.x

If you have a sketch file created by skice 1.4.1 or an older file that has been updated to work with 1.4.1, it can be easily updated to work with 2.x using upgrade command.

Upgrading from 1.3.2 to 1.4.1

Some of the functionality has been moved from the HTML template to the sketch file in preparation for version 2.0.0. Refer to the updated Canvas 2D and WebGL sketch templates to see what code needs to be changed, but the most important part is to add CanvasSettings import and instantiation as well as a reference to the canvas element to your existing sketches like this.

import CanvasSettings from 'canvas_settings'

const canvas = document.getElementById('sketch_canvas')
const canvasSettings = new CanvasSettings()

Alternatively you can keep the old naming convention.

import CanvasSettings from 'canvas_settings'

const canvas = document.getElementById('sketch_canvas')
const CANVAS_SETTINGS = new CanvasSettings()