Aurora 3D Tutorials

Aurora 3D Tutorials

This is a set of tutorials that deal with creating a multi-featured 3D engine. Currently they are for the purpose of educating members of the Aurora Project on the different aspects of creating an engine. Keep in mind that we'll be serious about developing a 3D engine in these tutorials, so this is not for the faint of heart. As with many other interesting programming projects, you will have to make use of some mathematics. Although I try to present things in as simple and straightforward a manner as I can, generally more math you know, the easier it will be for you to understand 3D concepts and to invent new ideas on your own.

A note before you beign clicking on the links below. I designed the first 7 tutorials to be read in order, from the first to the last. They introduce 3D concepts progressively. If you understand everything in one tutorial, you can skip ahead. Tutorials and articles after tutorial #8can be read in any order. They will talk about various interesting techniques. Also, those of you who like to see stuff in action right away can skip the theory and explanations in the first part of a tutorial and jump straight to The Code sections. Perhaps some of you can even understand everything from just reading The Code sections, saving yourself a considerable amount of time, but missing out on a lot of interesting stuff ;-)

(How to learn 3D programming - Someone wrote this =)

1. Points in Space The basic 3D problem.

2. Polygons The basic idea behind texturemapping, in case you didn't know.

3. Camera Movement The lowdown on world-to-camera transformations.

4. Clipping Using arbitrary planes for visibility testing and whacking off parts of polys.

5. Rendering Backface culling, painter's algo, z-buffering, octree, BSP... it goes on.

6. Portals The basic ideas behind a portal engine.

7. More Portals More advanced ideas you can use in a portal engine.

8. Locations Keeping track of sectors, where you are and and what to draw.

9. Monsters and Tables

10. Lighting

11 Shading

12. Engine Structure

13. Collision Detection

1.	Points in Space	The basic 3D problem.
2.	Polygons	The basic idea behind texturemapping, in case you didn't know.
3.	Camera Movement	The lowdown on world-to-camera transformations.
4.	Clipping	Using arbitrary planes for visibility testing and whacking off parts of polys.
5.	Rendering	Backface culling, painter's algo, z-buffering, octree, BSP... it goes on.
6.	Portals	The basic ideas behind a portal engine.
7.	More Portals	More advanced ideas you can use in a portal engine.
8.	Locations	Keeping track of sectors, where you are and and what to draw.

9.	Monsters and Tables
10.	Lighting
11	Shading
12.	Engine Structure
13.	Collision Detection