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

Applying textures to models


Textures play a very important role in the visual appearance of any game. They are the images that are wrapped around the models to add color and detail to the polygons that form the model. To use textures properly, a model has to be given texture coordinates that tell Panda3D how to apply the texture to the model. It is possible to automatically generate these coordinates, but this is rarely done in practice. The best way to create these coordinates is in a modeling package, such as Blender. For our game, the models we use will already have the texture coordinates created.

We have two options for applying textures to our model. The first method we've already used, and that is to have the texture applied in the modeling package when we export an egg file, so that when the egg is loaded the texture is already there. That's what we've done with our track.

The second method is to apply the texture with code at runtime. This method is best when we want to use some of...