

# Asset Libraries

A range of libraries for textures, models and more to load into the playground. These can help you to illustrate issues you may have without having to find a CORs acceptable server to load your own assets into the playground. Also a range of programmable textures and material built using a variety of shaders.


# Tool

This section contains information about the rich toolbox available in Babylon.js. Whether it's debugging your scene with the inspector, or creating advanced materials with ease using the Node Material editor, and everything in between, this section has everything you could want to know about the fantastic tools available to make your development process easier and more fun.



# Utilities

These are JavaScript functions that can be added to your Babylon.js project if they are useful. Each is given a brief explanation and a Playground example of its use.


Starting with Babylon.js v3.1, we introduced the NullEngine which is a version of the main Babylon.js engine but with no need for a webgl capable device.

The NullEngine will not produce any rendering and thus can be used in a node / server side environment.

It can be used to:
- Run tests
- Run a server side version of your application / game
- Use specific Babylon.js services (like gltf loaders for instance)

## General

To use a headless version of Babylon.js, just run:

```
var engine = new BABYLON.NullEngine();
var scene = new BABYLON.Scene(engine);
```

If you want to use it in a node.js environment, you may need to add some additional resources (like support for xhr):

```
var BABYLON = require("../../dist/preview release/babylon.max");
var LOADERS = require("../../dist/preview release/loaders/babylonjs.loaders");
global.XMLHttpRequest = require('xhr2').XMLHttpRequest;

var engine = new BABYLON.NullEngine();
var scene = new BABYLON.Scene(engine);

var light = new BABYLON.PointLight("Omni", new BABYLON.Vector3(20, 20, 100), scene);

var camera = new BABYLON.ArcRotateCamera("Camera", 0, 0.8, 100, BABYLON.Vector3.Zero(), scene);

BABYLON.SceneLoader.ImportMesh("", "https://playground.babylonjs.com/scenes/", "skull.babylon", scene, function (newMeshes) {
    camera.target = newMeshes[0];

    console.log("Meshes loaded from babylon file: " + newMeshes.length);
    for (var index = 0; index < newMeshes.length; index++) {
        console.log(newMeshes[index].toString());
    }

    BABYLON.SceneLoader.ImportMesh("", "https://www.babylonjs.com/Assets/DamagedHelmet/glTF/", "DamagedHelmet.gltf", scene, function (meshes) {
        console.log("Meshes loaded from gltf file: " + meshes.length);
        for (var index = 0; index < meshes.length; index++) {
            console.log(meshes[index].toString());
        }
    });

    console.log("render started")
    engine.runRenderLoop(function() {
        scene.render();
    })
});

```

## Configuration

You can specifiy some options to the NullEngine constructor:

```
var engine = new BABYLON.NullEngine({
    renderWidth: 512,
    renderHeight: 256,
    textureSize: 512
});
```

With `renderWidth` and `renderHeight` you can define the size of the virtual canvas used to simulate the render surface.
With `textureSize`, you can define the size of all textures (which will be all black) used by the NullEngine.

## Troubleshooting

While the goal of the NullEngine is to completely replace the Engine class, some features cannot be used server side:
* camera.attachControl cannot be used as it requires a HTML eLement
* DynamicTexture cannot be used as they rely on HTML canvas

Furthermore as we already mentioned earlier, you need to provide an implementation of the XmlHttpRequest class.

Tools And Resources

Coming next

Tools

Learn all about the powerful development tools available to you in Babylon.js.

Asset Libraries

Learn all about the Babylon.js asset libraries.

Utilities

Learn about some handy javascript functions that you can add to any project, called Utilities.

Offsite Tutorials

List of helpful offsite tutorials about Babylon.js.