Irrlicht 1.7 Realtime 3D Engine Beginner's Guide will teach you to master all that is required to create 2D and 3D applications using Irrlicht, beginning right from installation, and proceeding step-by-step to deployment.
Beginning with installation, this book guides you through creating a basic template application, followed by using meshes, creating overlays, and UI. You will then scan through data types, nodes, scenes, camera, lights, and particle systems. Finally, you will learn about some advanced concepts such as handling data, files, and shaders, followed by the last stage deployment in an appendix.
This book is a step-by-step guide to Irrlicht that starts at an easy level for beginners and then gradually works to more advanced topics through clear code examples and a number of demos, which illustrate theoretical concepts.
Chapter 1, Installing Irrlicht, shows how to get and set up Irrlicht across different platforms such as Windows, Max, and Linux.
Chapter 2, Creating a Basic Template Application, explains how to set up and create a basic Irrlicht application using different Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) such as Microsoft Visual Studio, XCode, CodeBlocks, and so on.
Chapter 3, Loading Meshes, shows how to add 3D meshes to our application, apply materials, and animate them.
Chapter 4, Overlays and User Interface, explores the 2D capabilities of Irrlicht, creating graphical user interface (GUI), loading, and rendering 2D images.
Chapter 5, Understanding Data Types, provides a primer on C++ templates as well as some mathematical concepts such as vectors.
Chapter 6, Managing Scenes, introduces using CopperCube, which is a visual 3D scene editor for Irrlicht available for both free and commercial use.
Chapter 7, Using Nodes The Basic Objects of the Irrlicht 3D engine, explains what the nodes in Irrlicht are and how to use animators to do some basic animations.
Chapter 8, Managing Cameras, shows how to use camera scene nodes and touches a little bit on creating a simple terrain to test the walkthrough camera.
Chapter 9, Lightening the Scene, introduces lighting concepts, materials, shadows, and using CopperCube/IrrEdit.
Chapter 10, Creating Eye Candy Effects with Particle Systems, shows how to implement particle systems both in the visual editor and from the code.
Chapter 11, Handling Data and Files, explains how to save and load game-related data files such as player save files.
Chapter 12, Using Shaders in Irrlicht, introduces how the graphics rendering pipeline works and practical usage of shaders in Irrlicht.
The Appendix, Deploying an Irrlicht Application, explains the procedures and essential dependencies to be included while packaging an Irrlicht application for different platforms such as Windows, Mac, or Linux.
You should have a working knowledge and understanding of programming in C\C++ and a compiler to compile and run the sample code. Your computer should also have a graphic card with 3D capabilities with supports for DirectX and OpenGL. We'll start with setting up Irrlicht on different platforms, so you don't need to have installed Irrlicht on your computer.
If you have C++ skills and are interested in learning Irrlicht to create 2D/3D applications, this book is for you. Absolutely no knowledge of Irrlicht is necessary for you to follow this book!
In this book, you will find several headings appearing frequently.
To give clear instructions of how to complete a procedure or task, we use:
1. Action 1
2. Action 2
3. Action 3
Instructions often need some extra explanation so that they make sense, so they are followed with:
This heading explains the working of tasks or instructions that you have just completed.
You will also find some other learning aids in the book, including:
These are short multiple choice questions intended to help you test your own understanding.
These set practical challenges and give you ideas for experimenting with what you have learned.
You will also find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text are shown as follows: "we load our mesh file and store it in an IMesh object".
A block of code is set as follows:
if (node)
{
node->setMaterialFlag(EMF_LIGHTING, false);
node->setMaterialTexture(0, driver->getTexture("sydney.bmp"));
}
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "click on Add Images to add images".
Note
Tips and tricks appear like this.
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