3D Rendering
This tutorial illustrates how to use the 3D rendering capabilities of the UI library. This tutorial assumes that you are at least a bit familiar with hardware-accelerated 3D rendering.
The code for this tutorial is available in the root/tutorials/s3d/ directory in the Storm release.
As such, you can run them using the command storm -f tutorials.s3d.<sample> where <sample> is
the name of the example. The source code is heavily commented, and it is therefore possible to
follow along just by reading the source code in the order outlined below.
Common Utilities
Before starting, it is worth knowing that the file common.bs contains a few utilities to make the
rest of the examples shorter and more to the point.
Most importantly, this file contains the class tutorials.s3d.SampleWindow. It simply
inherits from ui.Frame, initializes a window and sets the provided
ui.Painter3D to the window. This way we don't have to create a new ui.Frame
for every example. There is also a function
void runSample(core.Str title, ui.Painter3D painter) that accepts a title for the frame and a
ui.Painter3D. It then creates a window and waits for it to close.
In addition to window management, common.bs provides the class
tutorials.s3d.SamplePainter3D. It inherits from ui.Painter3D and provides
the following additional member:
-
core.Float animationTime(core.Duration cycle)Compute the current animation time for some animation. The returned
Floatwill increase from 0.0 to 1.0 in cycles ofcycle. This is intended to make it easier to implement simple repeating animations.
Finally, it implements core.io.Url resUrl(core.Str filename) that looks up the full path to a
file name in the relevant resources directory. This is used to make it convenient to locate sample
models and textures. There is also a vertex type tutorials.s3d.Output, that is used as
the output vertex type in many examples.
Tutorials
The following tutorials are available. The tutorials depend on each other, so it is recommended to follow them (at least roughly) from start to end.