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Newbie

Started by Ranor May 7, 2003 at 10:02 AM 8 replies 850+ views

Original Post

May 7, 2003 at 10:02 AM

Hello everyone! Some time ago I found a tutorial about software 3D programming. One thing caused another and soon I was working hard on a small object renderer. I got it to do vertex shading, and backside culling. Now this took a lot of time to build although it was very fun. However I''m a bit stuck now and would appreciate some suggestions from those more experienced. What would be a good idea to to next? Also do you know of any good books? As I''m interested in 3D I also want to look at OpenGL but I''m unsure if I should wait with that until I get more experience on how to write a renderer myself. Thanks for your help.

James Trotter

May 7, 2003 at 1:39 PM

nehe.gamedev.net

Ranor

May 18, 2003 at 1:31 PM

quote:
Original post by James Trotter
nehe.gamedev.net

Thank you for the link. Does anyone know if there is any good book to learn software 3D? Or should I do OpenGL first?

Thanks

Mihail121

May 18, 2003 at 4:29 PM

Too sad but right :/.I myself has jumped in the OpenGL programming without to have anyidea of 3D math.No i''m doing a software renderer too and i''ve started to learn some stuff.The 3D math is very easy in fact and it''s fun to learn it.But it depends on the person if he wants to learn something or not.

Everything has it''s logical explanation....

Ranor

May 19, 2003 at 11:22 AM

quote:
Original post by Mihail121
Too sad but right :/.I myself has jumped in the OpenGL programming without to have anyidea of 3D math.No i''m doing a software renderer too and i''ve started to learn some stuff.The 3D math is very easy in fact and it''s fun to learn it.But it depends on the person if he wants to learn something or not.

I think polygon filling can be a bit difficult to grasp. Especially with vertex shading

I seemed to always get seams at the sides of the triangles for some reason. Don''t remember how I corrected it though.

Similarly the bresenham line drawing algorithm is a bit strange in the beginning until you realize that it is the old y=kx+m formula adapted to only use integers.

Thanks for all the replies. I think I might continue to study software 3D some more before looking at OpenGL. Still have that evil frustrum clipping to learn

. Will probably have to rewrite the renderer though as it is became a bit like spaghetti code from all experimenting.

kieren_j

May 19, 2003 at 5:53 PM

I''d suggest ..

http://www.flipcode.com/portal/

..theres also a 3d geometry primer, accessible on the left from the www.flipcode.com frontpage.

P.S. NeHe is good, but not God..... not the answer to everything

kieren_j

May 19, 2003 at 5:54 PM

Wait a sec, you DID say backside culling....

That''s backface culling... tee hee hee

HaywireGuy

May 19, 2003 at 11:49 PM

Another word for backside culling is "censorship".

kdogg

May 20, 2003 at 12:08 AM

Software rendering is still used a lot, just not in real time programs. maya, 3ds, lightwave, all have software renderers. Software rendering is a perfectly good field to get into. It isn''t used all that much in games, but the computer graphics industry also includes movies and other photorealistic applications that arent'' attainable in real time.

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