Contents  Preface  The Third  Dimension  Transformation  Math  Down to the Code  Conclusion  Get the source  Printable version     The Series  The Basics  First Steps to  Animation  Multitexturing  Building Worlds  With X Files

Preface

You may recall that in the first tutorial "The Basics", we determined that all samples which are built with the Direct3D Framework in the DirectX SDK are created by providing overloaded versions of the CD3DApplication methods:

...
ConfirmDevice()
OneTimeSceneInit()
InitDeviceObjects()
FrameMove()
Render()
DeleteDeviceObjects()
FinalCleanup()
...

We also learned the task of every method in the framework class.

In this tutorial we will start to write our first animated app. It will show a red and a yellow object, which can be rotated around its x and y axis. The application uses a Z-Buffer and the simplest keyboard interface I can think of. You can move and rotate the camera with the up, down, left, right, c and the x keys. The input is handled via DirectInput. The movement of the camera feels a little bit like the first X-Wing games. Only a space scanner is missing :-).

This is in response to a lot of e-mails I received. Readers of the first version of this tutorial wanted to know how to rotate and move more than one object in a scene independently.

As always, you can switch between the fullscreen and windowed mode with ALT-F4. F1 will show you the about box. F2 will give you a selection of useable drivers and ESC will shutdown the app.

To compile the source, take a look at The Basics Tutorial. Be sure to also link dinput.lib into the project.

One of the best ways to learn how to use world transformations with Direct3D is the Boids sample from the DirectX 7 SDK. I've found a good tutorial on camera orientation with Direct3DX at Mr. Gamemaker. Other interesting documents on camera orientation are at flipCode, CrystalSpace, Dave's Math Tables and the pages on Geometry from Paul Bourke. In addition, the pages of Mayhem on Matrices and of course the book from John de Goes on Direct3D 3D Game Programming with C++ are useful. For the DirectInput part, I've found André LaMothe's Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus very useful.

Get the source here.

Next : The Third Dimension