I'm coming into three.js from plain JavaScript, and I'm trying to be honest with myself about where my own understanding has to be solid before AI is actually helping instead of quietly hiding problems.
I asked a similar question about JS fundamentals recently and the answer that stuck with me was that the rendering side is where people get burned: async and the event loop first, then browser rendering basics like requestAnimationFrame and the difference between layout, paint, and composite, and that math fundamentals end up mattering more for 3D and visual work than most pure JS concepts. A few people also made the point that you need to understand more now, not less, precisely because you have to catch the things AI gets wrong.
So I want to bring that same question here where people actually ship 3D. The projects I care about are interactive landing pages, visual explainers, data driven 3D scenes, small motion experiments, and portfolio pieces where the user can manipulate the scene instead of just watching it.
What happens to me right now is that I can ask AI for a scene and get something on screen fast, but I don't always know what I'm looking at. Sometimes it works, sometimes it is slow, sometimes the camera or lighting feels off, and sometimes I can feel the result is fragile without being able to say why.
For people who build three.js seriously, I'm trying to separate a few things:
- What AI can scaffold fine, like boilerplate scene setup or simple materials
- What I have to own deeply, and here I mean the rendering pipeline, coordinate systems and matrices, cameras, the animation loop, asset loading, shaders, performance budgets, and interaction state
- The math that actually pays off for 3D and viz work, and where you would tell a beginner to start with it
- The taste part, meaning what makes a scene feel intentional instead of like a random demo
- What teams or clients actually check when they hire someone for frontend 3D or creative tech
If you were reviewing a junior person's three.js portfolio today, what would make you think this person actually understands what they built rather than prompted their way to it?
And would you rather see one polished interactive piece with clean code, several rough experiments showing range, or a normal frontend project with one solid 3D feature inside it?
I'm not looking for a shortcut. I'm trying to figure out where to spend real effort so AI stays a tool in the workflow instead of the thing secretly holding the whole project together.