3D Programming Tricks

Abstract

3D programming is an incredibly wide and complex field. This chapter explores some topics that are the absolute minimum requirement to write a simple 3D game:

• We’ll revisit our friend the vector and attach one more coordinate.

• Lighting is a vital part of any 3D game. We’ll look at how to perform simple lighting with OpenGL ES.

• Defining objects programmatically is cumbersome. We’ll look at a simple 3D file format so that we can load and render 3D models created with 3D modeling software.

• In Chapter 8, we discussed object representation and collision detection. We’ll look at how to do the same in 3D.

• We’ll also briefly revisit some of the physics concepts that we explored in Chapter 10 — this time in a 3D context.