A gradient editor in jQuery
PLEASE CONTRIBUTE!!!
I don't know jQuery and my CSS skills suck so I could really use some help / advice on best practices.
http://greggman.github.com/gradient-editor/
The goal here is to make a gradient editor that can be used to edit both CSS gradients and more importantly for me, give me data that I can use to generate gradients using canvas 2d.
See issue tracker.
For me the biggest reason is because ramp textures are super important for 3D graphics and now that WebGL makes them accessible to anyone we need a ramp editor to let people play with ramp textures.
Examples:
Typical lighting comes up with a multiplier from 0.0 to 1.0 usually based on the angle of the viewer to the surface vs the angle light to the surface. Instead of using that number directly, use it as a lookup into a ramp texture for much finer control. From just adjusting how the lighting looks in general to making interesting toon shaders you can do it all with a ramp texture. See this work-in-progress demo
Similarly, instead of having light color be a constant use another ramp texture to have things in the back lit differently than things in the front.
Ramp textures can be used to color particles over time. Pass in the time, use the time to lookup a color in the ramp texture.