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

Time for action – using TextureStages


That's enough talk about TextureStages. It's about time we saw them at work. Let's start putting our cycle together with all the right textures so we can make use of these things.

  1. Open the file BamWriter_01.py.

  2. We'll start by applying a gloss map to self.moulding. Add this code to the very beginning of the setupModels method:

        self.glossTS = TextureStage("glossTS")
        self.glossTS.setMode(TextureStage.MModulateGloss)
  3. We have our new TextureStage set to use ModulateGloss mode, which requires an image with an alpha channel. However, the texture we're using is in the PNG format, which doesn't support alpha channels. We can fix that by changing the line where we load RedTeamTex.png to the following:

        self.teamTex = loader.loadTexture("../Images/RedTeamTex.png",
          "../Images/HighGloss.png")
  4. By telling the loader to load two images at once, we're actually combining them into a single texture object. The first image becomes the RGB section of the texture...