3D Programming Concepts How objects are described in 3D and Rendering Pipelines – A conceptual way of thinking of the steps involved of converting an abstract mathematical model of an object into a beautiful on- screen picture

Rendering The entire process of calculating the appearance of the 3D model – converting it to an entity that can be drawn on a two-dimensional screen and then actually displaying the resulting image – is called rendering

Coordinate Systems The Torque Game Engine uses a slightly different coordinate system, a right-handed one.

3D Shapes Vertices define the shape of a 3D model. We connect the vertices with lines known as edges. If we connect three or more vertices with edges to create a closed figure, we’ve created a polygon. The area of the model is known as the surface. Sometime only one side is visible. The other is a “hidden surface”

Transformation The first conversion, to world space coordinates involves: A scale operation (controls the objects size) A rotation (which sets orientation) and a translation (which set location)

Rendering Rendering is the process of converting the 3D mathematical model of an object into an on-screen 2D image. A face is essentially a set of one or more contiguous co-planar adjacent triangles. The triangles form a single flat surface.

Types of shading Flat Shading Lambert Shading Gouraud Shading Phong Shading Texture Mapping Bump Mapping Environmental Mapping