Earcut

Earcut is a fast, lightweight library used for polygon triangulation. In 3D graphics and geometry processing, triangulation is the process of converting a polygon (which may have more than three vertices) into smaller triangles. Triangles are fundamental in 3D rendering because graphics hardware (GPUs) can efficiently process triangles.

The extrudePolygon component (or other components relying on polygon-based geometry) in Babylon.js or similar 3D libraries needs earcut to convert the 2D polygon data (e.g., vertices) into a set of triangles, which can be extruded into 3D space. Without earcut, Babylon.js would be unable to perform this triangulation, and the extrusion process (turning flat shapes into 3D objects) would not work correctly.

Installation

First, you’ll need to install the earcut dependency:

npm install earcut --save

Then use ProvidePlugin of Webpack (or something similar if you are using another module bundler) to automatically loads modules when they are referenced in your code and to make it globally available.

Here’s the basic configuration for ProvidePlugin in your webpack.config.ts configuration:

import { ProvidePlugin } from 'webpack';
 
// ...
 
{
    // ...
    plugins: [
        // other plugins...
        new ProvidePlugin({
            earcut: 'earcut'
        })
    ]
}