Contents  Introduction  DirectX  DirectDraw  Direct3D  Rendering Engine  File Format  DirectX and COM  Summary and  Appendix  Printable version

Summary

In this tutorial, we have seen that Direct3D is one of the components of DirectX and is an API for 3D graphics programming. This API gives hardware independence in addition to transparent hardware acceleration and a fast software based emulation for missing hadrware implementations of the rendering pipeline. We saw that the rendering engine of Direct3D consists of three modules, namely the transformation module, the lighting module and the rasterization module. We mentioned the different modes in which Direct3D can be operated, namely the retained mode and the immediate mode.

Then we covered the file format used to represent the data objects and the relationship of Direct3D to COM and its usage in the C++ and C programming languages.

Appendix A

This section presents a sample data file. The data file specifies a cube.

References

1

Kraig Brockschmidt. Inside OLE. Microsoft Press, 2nd edition, 1995.

2

Microsoft Corporation. DirectX SDK (ver 3.0, 5.0) Reference. Microsoft Corporation, 1996-97.

3

Microsoft Corporation. Direct3D Reference Manual. Microsoft Corporation, 1997. Visual Studio Help.

4

Microsoft Corporation. DirectX File Format Specification, ver 1.13. Microsoft Corporation Web Page (www.microsoft.com/directx), 1997.

5

Foley and Van Damm. Introduction to Computer Graphics. Addison Wesley, 1994.

6

Donald Hearn and Pauline Baker. Computer Graphics. Prentice Hall of India, 2nd edition, 1994.

7

Bipin Patwardhan. Direct3D Immediate Mode. National Centre for Software Technology, Mumbai, India, Aug-Sep 1997. Intel Developers Conference, Aug-Sep 97.

8

Bipin Patwardhan. Direct3D Retained Mode. National Centre for Software Technology, Mumbai, India, Aug-Sep 1997. Intel Developers Conference, Aug-Sep 97.

9

Charles Petzold. Windows 95 Programming. Microsoft Press, 1st edition, 1996.

10

Jeff Prosise. Windows 95 Programming Using MFC. Microsoft Press, 1st edition, 1997.

11

David Rogers. Procedural Elements for Computer Graphics. McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1st edition, 1985.

12

David Rogers. Mathematical Elements for Computer Graphics. McGraw-Hill Book Company, 2nd edition, 1990.

13

Alan Watt. Fundamentals of Three Dimensional Computer Graphics. Addison Wesley, 1989.

14

Alan Watt. 3D Computer Graphics. Addison Wesley, 2nd edition, 1993.

Bipin Patwardhan
National Centre for Software Technology, Juhu, Mumbai, India.
email: bipin@ncst.ernet.in