Storing a 3D scene for

[Andrew McCall]

Hi Folks,

I am looking for some advice for creating a very basic 3D application -
this isn't a competitor to any other product like K-3D/Blender etc, its
just a case of me wanting to learn more so I can eventually help out
projects like K-3D.

The first thing I wanted to do was to show an empty 3D scene, so I
started thinking about how I would actually store the scene and was
after some advice on ways of doing this. My initial thought would be
to set up a 3D array of some sort containing data, but after thinking
about this I had a number of questions.

For example I am not sure how the resolution of the array would
correspond to the resolution of the final image, if I set up an array
of 640x480 to contain my data - how does this - am I correct in
thinking that if I had some sort of parser to parse my array and then
output a file based on an existing file specification, for example
POV-Ray or Renderman format then the final output would be decided by
the renderer rather than the modeller?

Another question is how do I know how large to make my array?

Is there a "standard" or common way for doing something like this? Can
anyone give me opinions on ways of doing this?

I know that there are open source application available where I can
look at the source code, but many of these applications contain so much
other code that its difficult to separate out the stuff I want from the
stuff I don't want, plus much of this code contains advanced features
that complicate things.

Thanks,

Andrew McCall

 

[Gernot Frisch]

Hi Folks,

I am looking for some advice for creating a very basic 3D
application -
this isn't a competitor to any other product like K-3D/Blender etc,
its
just a case of me wanting to learn more so I can eventually help out
projects like K-3D.

The first thing I wanted to do was to show an empty 3D scene, so I
started thinking about how I would actually store the scene and was
after some advice on ways of doing this. My initial thought would
be
to set up a 3D array of some sort containing data, but after
thinking
about this I had a number of questions.

For example I am not sure how the resolution of the array would
correspond to the resolution of the final image, if I set up an
array
of 640x480 to contain my data - how does this - am I correct in
thinking that if I had some sort of parser to parse my array and
then
output a file based on an existing file specification, for example
POV-Ray or Renderman format then the final output would be decided
by
the renderer rather than the modeller?

Another question is how do I know how large to make my array?

Is there a "standard" or common way for doing something like this?
Can
anyone give me opinions on ways of doing this?

I know that there are open source application available where I can
look at the source code, but many of these applications contain so
much
other code that its difficult to separate out the stuff I want from
the
stuff I don't want, plus much of this code contains advanced
features
that complicate things.

Here we are talking about C++ _language_. Try
comp.games.development.programming.algorithms e.g.