Book Image

Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine Beginner's Guide

Book Image

Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine Beginner's Guide

Overview of this book

Panda3D is a game engine, a framework for 3D rendering and game development for Python and C++ programs. It includes graphics, audio, I/O, collision detection, and other abilities relevant to the creation of 3D games. Also, Panda3D is Open Source and free for any purpose, including commercial ventures. This book will enable you to create finished, marketable computer games using Panda3D and other entirely open-source tools and then sell those games without paying a cent for licensing. Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine Beginner's Guide follows a logical progression from a zero start through the game development process all the way to a finished, packaged installer. Packed with examples and detailed tutorials in every section, it teaches the reader through first-hand experience. These tutorials are followed by explanations that describe what happened in the tutorial and why. You will start by setting up a workspace, and then move on to the basics of starting up Panda3D. From there, you will begin adding objects like a level and a character to the world inside Panda3D. Then the book will teach you to put the game's player in control by adding change over time and response to user input. Then you will learn how to make it possible for objects in the world to interact with each other by using collision detection and beautify your game with Panda3D's built-in filters, shaders, and texturing. Finally, you will add an interface, audio, and package it all up for the customer.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Summary


The main focus of this chapter was learning about NodePaths, where they come from, and what we can do with them.

Specifically, we covered:

  • First we learned how to get Panda3D started so we could begin exploring how it works. We did that by importing DirectStart.

  • After that, we learned how to load models into the scene, which gave us our first NodePaths to play around with. We used loader.loadModel to bring our track and, later, two cycles into the scene.

  • Next we learned about transforming NodePaths with the position, rotation, and scale methods. We also learned about how each NodePath has its own coordinate system, and how parent child relationships affect that.

  • Finally, we learned about render attributes, their basic uses, and how parent child relationships affect them as well.

We also talked about the Scene Graph, how it controls what is rendered and what isn't, and how NodePaths can be moved around in it.

Now that we've learned about NodePaths we're ready to make them move around on...