3D development in Godot through a web programmer's eyes
A practical guide to Godot 4.x for people coming from JS/TS. An open-source engine with its own GDScript language, scenes instead of prefabs, and an MIT license — a different philosophy from Unity.
The scene tree and Node3D — the foundation of everything in Godot.
How Godot calls your code — _ready, _process, _physics_process, signals, await.
How to read the keyboard, mouse, gamepad, and touch through a single action system.
StaticBody3D, RigidBody3D, CharacterBody3D, Area3D — and why physics got faster in 4.6.
Camera3D, first/third-person views, and a plugin equivalent of Cinemachine.
Forward+/Mobile/Compatibility, BaseMaterial3D, gdshader — how Godot draws a frame.
DirectionalLight3D, OmniLight3D, SpotLight3D, lightmaps, and SDFGI.
AnimationLibrary, state machine, blend spaces, root motion.
AudioStreamPlayer3D, routing through AudioBus, effects.
Control, anchors, containers, Theme and StyleBox.
A universal scene/prefab container and data-only assets.
CharacterBody3D, move_and_slide, RayCast3D — a playable FPS skeleton.
NavigationRegion3D, NavigationAgent3D — pathfinding and a chasing enemy.
ParticleProcessMaterial, emitters, sub-emitters, collision.
ENet/WebSocket/WebRTC peers, RPC, MultiplayerSpawner and Synchronizer.
How Godot loads assets — synchronously, asynchronously, with progress.
Export Presets, Profiler, the web target and WASM, a release checklist.
PhantomCamera FreeLook, CharacterBody3D, double jump, coyote time, a chasing enemy, checkpoints.
Spatial shader structure, built-in functions, uniforms, varyings, optimization steps.
Curve3D, Path3D, PathFollow3D — movement along a spline, AI patrols, camera cutscenes.
MeshLibrary + GridMap for assembling locations from reusable blocks.
Parallel tasks in Godot — map generation, data processing, long operations without freezing the UI.
The Decal node for bullet holes, graffiti, dirt masks, footprints, and other overlays on geometry.
Tool scripts, custom inspectors, EditorPlugin, adding nodes and docks to the Godot editor.
TileMapLayer, TileSet, terrains, autotile, navigation for 2D projects in Godot 4.x.
XROrigin3D, XRCamera3D, XRController3D — a basic VR scene for Meta Quest and SteamVR.
godot-cpp, gdext (Rust), when native extensions are needed and how they work.
Godot .NET edition, differences from GDScript, migration, gotchas for developers coming from the Unity world.
FileAccess, ConfigFile, ResourceSaver, JSON, encryption, user:// paths.
