Some embodiments of the present invention provide a system that renders graphics in a computing system that includes a plugin associated with a web browser in the computing system and a web application configured to execute in the web browser. During operation, the web application specifies a graphics model and provides the graphics model to the plugin. Next, the plugin generates a graphics-processing unit (GPU) command stream from the graphics model. Finally, the plugin sends the GPU command stream to a GPU of the computing system, which renders an image corresponding to the graphics model.