| No matter where you turn in the world of gaming, you?re bound to notice the rapidly increasing use of 3D. If you?re serious about game programming, you must understand the world of 3D modeling. Focus On 3D Models is the guide you need for doing just that! This is the only book on the market that gives game programmers a comprehensive guide to the most popular 3D modeling file formats. You?ll also get coverage of foundational material such as mathematics, skeletal animation, and more. Even if you know nothing about 3D character animation when you start, by the end of the book you will be able to work with all the popular file formats, write readers, and animate the meshes in real time in your applications. For maximum benefit, you must have experience with C++, know how to create a rudimentary 3D engine, and have an understanding of algebra and trigonometry.
Anew trend is creeping into video games at an incredible rate. This trend makes games more realistic, more believable, and in some cases, more fun. A large percentage of new games use this trend, and consumers are gobbling these games up as fast as they can be made. This new trend, of course, is the use of 3D. From the player models to the virtual game worlds, players are demanding some form of 3D interaction. This idea of 3D interaction encompasses many genres, even those that have traditionally been 2D. Games such as Blizzard’s Warcraft 3 have brought 3D interaction into the “Real Time Strategy” genre, a genre generally dominated by 2D games. Even puzzle and other “value games” are starting to hook into the idea of 3D.
At the same time, hardware manufacturers are creating better and faster hardware. Ultra-fast processors and graphics cards capable of handling millions of pieces of 3D geometry every second are becoming very commonplace in the average home computer. This allows you as a game developer to write more realistic and graphically intensive games without causing the average consumers’ computers to crawl under a rock at the sight of them. New generations of graphics cards are allowing more and more of the calculations to be done on the graphics card, freeing up the processor to concentrate on other aspects of the game, such as sound, enemy AI, and, well, even more graphical effects. |