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I am pretty new to webgl, and I've tried finding answers to my problem in old questions but I haven't been able to find any.

My problem is that I in my fragment shader need a function that generates a random number between -1 and 1. As I understand it I need to make a function myself, because HTML doesn't have a random number generator but Javascript does. I made this function in the head: 

<script = "text/javascript">
function random() {
return Math.random()*2-1;    //random number between -1 and 1
}
</script>

When I then try to call the function in the fragment shader, I am told that no overloaded function is found. But I can't really figure out how I am suppose to declare and call the function then. This is how I try to invoke it in the fragment shader: 

 ...
 for (float i = 0.0 ; i < no_of_samples ; i ++){

        ndc.x = 2.0*((gl_FragCoord.x+half_pixelsize*random())/width-0.5);  

 ...
some_name
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1 Answers1

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Calling functions like that is impossible.

GLSL is compiled by a completely different compiler (probably provided by the GPU driver) and it's completely unaware of the JavaScript environment.

You may want to look at GLSL solutions, e.g.: Random / noise functions for GLSL.

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transistor09
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  • It's possible to write a compiler that [translates JavaScript functions into GLSL](https://github.com/stackgl/glsl-transpiler), so it should be possible to call those functions from a shader. – Anderson Green Jul 02 '19 at 17:24