Fragment

A modern toolkit for creative coding

Fragment lets you sketch, render, and export canvas-based graphics with ease, from quick experiments to production-ready visuals.

Features

• Start instantly using built-in templates for Canvas 2D, p5.js, and three.js
• Generate live GUI controls directly from your sketch parameters
• Reload GLSL shaders on the fly
• Attach mouse, keyboard, and MIDI inputs directly from the interface or your code
• Organize your creative workspace with flexible window layouts
• Export your sketches as images or videos in standard formats
• Build static bundles ready for production deployment

Specifications

• Fast development and production builds powered by Vite
• Interactive command-line interface on top of sade and clack
• Video encoding in the browser with Mediabunny
• TypeScript support

Installation

With npx

npx fragment-tools sketch.js --new

Installing globally with --global

npm install fragment-tools --global

You should now be able to run fragment from your command line.

fragment -v

Installing locally

npm install fragment-tools

Usage

# Create a new directory for your sketches
mkdir sketches

# Move into that folder
cd sketches

# Create a sketch from a template
npx fragment sketch.js --new --template=2d

# or with TypeScript
npx fragment sketch.ts --new --template=2d --typescript

## Run an existing sketch
npx fragment sketch.js

Learn more about the available flag options in the CLI docs.

Example

This is an example of a sketch drawing a blue circle on a black background with a custom control for the radius of the circle.

export let props = {
	background: {
		value: '#0057B8', // create a color input GUI
	},
	fill: {
		value: 'rgba(255, 215, 0, 1)', // create a color input GUI
	},
	size: {
		value: 256, // create a number input GUI
		params: {
			min: 64, // add a range slider
			max: 512,
		},
	},
	shape: {
		value: 'circle', // create a string input
		params: {
			options: ['circle', 'square'], // turns the input into a select with different options
		},
	},
};

export let update = ({ context, width, height, pixelRatio }) => {
	// draw background
	context.fillStyle = props.background.value;

	const w = width * pixelRatio;
	const h = height * pixelRatio;

	context.fillRect(0, 0, w, h);

	// draw circle
	const shape = props.shape.value;
	const size = props.size.value * pixelRatio;

	context.fillStyle = props.fill.value;

	if (shape === 'circle') {
		context.beginPath();
		context.arc(w * 0.5, h * 0.5, size, 0, 2 * Math.PI, false);
		context.fill();
	} else if (shape === 'square') {
		context.fillRect(w * 0.5 - size, h * 0.5 - size, size * 2, size * 2);
	}
};

export let rendering = '2d';
export let fps = 0;
export let name = 'Canvas2D Shape Example';
export let buildConfig = {
	resizing: 'window',
};

Learn how to write your own sketch by following the Getting started guide, reading the API docs or the other examples.

Contributing

If you find issues, please file one with details on how to reproduce it.

Feel free to reach out on Bluesky if you want to discuss the project.

Running it locally

# Clone or fork the project
git clone https://github.com/raphaelameaume/fragment.git

# Move to the root of the repository
cd fragment

# Run the command line locally
node ./bin/index.js examples/shape-2d.js --dev

# or from your sketch folder
node [path-to-root]/bin/index.js sketch.js --dev

The --dev flag only enables Vite info logLevel, helpful for development. Otherwise it will work the same as when you're running from the npm package.

Alternatively, you can tell npm to point the fragment command to the newly cloned folder.

# at the root of the repo
npm link

You should be able the command as before, only this time it will point to the repository instead of the globally installed package.

fragment sketch.js

If that's not the case, try to uninstall fragment-tools globally first, make sure the fragment command is not found anymore, then retry to link the project from the root of the repo.

Credits

• Vite
• Svelte
• The font used for display is the JetBrains Mono.
• Icons are from Iconic
• A special thanks to Matt Deslauriers for canvas-sketch and his multiple projects around generative-art tools.

License

See LICENSE.md for details.