Ten things to achieve when starting 3D programming
Starting 3D programming it is not an easy task to accomplish. There are a
lot of new things that come into to play, and they vary from choosing a
programming language to selecting the correct 3D modeling software.
These are the stuff that when they are done, no matter in what language
and with what rendering engine, you can consider yourself a semi-expert
on this matter.
1. Build your own custom graphic initialization function.
Today with the great variety of 3D engines and platforms this task is
always delegated to those. I still remember the times when you had to
initialize openGL with all the windows functions, and how you had to
manage windows handles and resource loading yourself. This is useful to
understand how things are managed internally and will give you more
comprehension of what you are doing. My advice is to start looking at
NEHE tutorials, it has a graphic initialization function written in C
and with windows APIs on chapter one. If this is a lot for you to
handle, you should look at C++ equivalent functions or try to port them
to managed languages like C#, java or python. There are plenty examples
on the internet.
2. Implement your own camera.
You can copy and paste a camera code from the internet, and use it
without major problems, but it is not until you make your own camera
from scratch that you will fully understand some concepts like vector
handling, translation matrices, angle conversion, etc. You should start
by coding a FPS (First Person Shooter) camera; it has everything it
needs to get you ready. Later if you want to make your own game and you
can’t use it, I recommend you to read this article to find out the type
of camera that best suits your needs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_camera_system.
3. Understand primary 3D concepts
When I started, I began to hear a lot of new words like, anti-aliasing,
anisotropic filtering, occlusion testing, z-buffer, alpha testing,
shader language, bump mapping, etc. Maybe if you are a gamer you have
seen some of them while configuring the graphic settings of your game.
Make sure you spent some time reading about this, because it will give
an overview of what is 3D programming.
4. Learn everything you can about vectors and matrices
This is always underestimated, I strongly recommend that in order to
correctly manage things like cameras, terrain following, ray tracing;
you should know everything about this. You should also learn minimum
trigonometry basis. Now I understand how easy my life would have been if
I would had spent only a few hours studying this matter.
5. Code yourself a 3D model loader
I recommend beginning with an .OBJ file or a .STL file because they have
an ASCII format representation. Later you can move to other more
complex formats like .3DS. With this you not only will understand more
how 3D models are saved, you will have to draw it in its raw manner:
triangles, and then you will understand how everything it’s drawn in a
graphics engine.
6. Successfully make your own collision algorithm
One thing it’s to draw a world and another thing it’s to manage his
geometry. In a 3D world there are no physics laws, you have to create
them. If you want an object not to go through a wall, then you have to
create and internal geometric representation of the wall and make all
the calculations yourself. There are several approaches to handle
collisions; I recommend starting with binary collisions with a labyrinth
project.
7. Implement a small particle engine.
I was disappointed when I found out that fire, smoke, some lighting and
other stunning effects that you see in 3D games are made by particles
and that particles are in essence planes with textures facing the
camera. The more particles you add the more realistic the effect looks
but the performance is more compromised
The first particle engine I made was a rocket smoke and I did it without
looking a particle engine tutorial. Later I realized I had reinvented
the wheel but I was really into this. By carrying out this you will
understand concepts like particle emitters, particle behavior and bill
boarding techniques, among others.
8. Learn the basics in a 3D modeling software
In order to make changes to the 3D models you want to use in your
application you should at least know operations like translating,
scaling, rotating, texturing, exporting to other formats and making
simple models. If you don’t do that you will suffer from depending on
other people to do your first game. I’ve worked with a few modeling
software and I strongly recommend 3D Max or Maya.
9. Load and play an animation
Loading and correctly playing an animation was the most difficult thing
in 3D that I've ever did. I had to do reverse engineering to a 3D max
.XAF file. I had to learn also stuff like bone hierarchy, matrix
interpolation, among others. At the end it was very gratifying to look
at your own models to move by themselves. I recommend starting animating
a robot since models like animals and people require other technique
called skinning.
10. Code a 2D custom Graphic User Interface (GUI)
When I began programming in XNA; I was forced to build my own GUI
because XNA does not have implemented any windows controls. This gave me
two things, the first one was the ability to make my custom GUI
controls and the other one was the understanding of concepts like event
handling and event capturing. It is no easy, the most difficult control I
have made is a listbox, but once is made you can use it everywhere.
I am sure when you manage to achieve this ten things you can say you
have the basic knowledge of 3D programming. I wrote this because I spent
a lot of work to achieve them and because I would like to everyone to
have a small guideline when starting in this world. My advice is to
start making a small game and to try to adapt them on the go. I think
this is the best way because trying to learn all this without the
possibility to see it in action is not very motivating.
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