This is a project in the early stages of development. It's Sun-Ray Raytracer.

The user interface has a quick action Button Menu and an app logo and wireframe display. It will also have an extensive program menu.

I'm not sure if I will use OpenGL to draw the wireframes based on a 3d polygon mesh file or if I will choose direct draw methods to draw to the Rasterport. So I will work on the user interface and drawing wireframes first then the 3d scenes.

I'd like to make it 100% compatible with 3D Studio .3ds and prj 3d object files as well as .scn scene files. It will use a progress indicator when rendering. Once the scene has been rendered it will be saved as .ppm then the file will be opened in the Picture Viewer window for display. The sample is "Utah Teapot".

Beautiful, simple and intuitive !

Good luck with your project @miker1264. I'm glad to see more software being developed!

Exactly. That's my intent to make it easy to use. The modular approach seems best. It will allow loading 3d scene files or 3ds. It will use a simple progress indicator like the one that Magellan uses on startup. I want it to seem reminiscent of the old DOS based 3D Studio R4. The Marble Vase is actually a real image of one of my own .3ds files from 3DStudio R4. It would be really cool to have a 3d graphics program that can render my old .3ds files and new ones too!

That's why I'm using the blue and grey colors. And the progressbar colors are also blue and grey. It will be about 50% based on existing code for the rendering engine and internal framework. The other 50% will be completely new code.

If you are interested in raytracing there is a website called Scratchapixel that explains all the details about raytracing programs.

This project is very interesting and also very difficult at the same time. It involves a lot of math and 3d vectors. It will require lots of research.

Congrats!!! Good to see new software, and 3D software runs close to earth in my case! I started learning with Imagine 3D when a render would take a night!

Miker you are back to work on the raytracing programme thank you

Yes. I agree. I have some pleasant memories of rendering with 3D Studio R4 in the mid-nineties. It was running in DOS 5.0 on a PC with a 33 Mhz CPU and very little memory.

The Marble Vase 3ds file took about 30 minutes to render to a 24 bit Targa Image. Rendering was so slow in those days. It will be interesting to see how much faster modern PC's are compared to those early days.

you could enable opengl when available

For displaying wireframes OpenGL (glut) may be useful but for rendering scenes a dedicated raytracer engine will be used.

Applications such as this are very complex. Building a full user interface which includes the wireframe display process including all the menu items and sub-functions is all very time consuming. For development and ease of testing I'd prefer a simple command line application.

The full-blown application will be "Sun-Ray Raytracer" which includes the complete user interface, button menu, app menu and display. The test application will be "RaytracerX" which is command line only with switches -w -r -s (wireframe, render, save). It will have a command line progress indicator 10%20%30%...100%...done!

The syntax of RaytracerX will be:
raytracerx -r dolphins.scn dolphins.ppm
which is very basic. I will add features and expand the functionality during development.

For old Amiga rendering applications I don't believe they could output 32 bit ARGB images, only RGB. The exception would be Lightwave and some other higher quality apps. RaytracerX will be able to produce either RGB or ARGB.

ok Miker good job, send me your paypal email I'll make you a donation

Miker I spoke to alexander the author of the wcs programa porting that can interact with 3D software and told him that your project is in the works and if wcs could interact with it

Although my application is based in part on older sources (Ray Storm) mostly for 3d object file loading and saving, it's a completely new raytracing/rendering application.

I'm not sure what interaction there will be between programs or how that will be beneficial.

It depends on wcs if it exports compatible files like it does with lightwave

currently wcs exports files in several formats including lightwave i asked alexander if he is also interested in exporting 3d studio files

The 3d rendering program needs some new functions to load 3d object files. So I will need to write an Object Loader for the program to load the vertices and 3d faces from the object files.

The alternate method is to hard code the 3d object data for testing which gets to be very tedious. It's much better to store this data and read from files.

@miker

AROS has a limited following of users, as a result there will be very few who are passionate about 3D Graphics.

Those who like 3D Graphics certainly use programs of a certain level and power available on other platforms.

In my opinion we need to focus on software that enhances the Operating System, and common-use software, this will enable users to use AROS as a productive computer.

Wanting to do a census to see how many AROS users would like to develop 3D Graphics

Rather than 3d graphics, 3d Rendering only uses the RTG Graphics and vector math to produce images. Rendering programs are more for nostalgia and amusement than anything else. For me it's an opportunity to learn new things.

I'm also working on Icon Tools and Picture Tools as well as more icons and themes that will be of use for AROS users who are interested in Graphics Programs.

Thank you miker, do what you like best, we will always be happy !