there's no rendering program, wcs it creates landscapes and even animations

Nice We'll just need a native program to create meshes
I know, Chicken & Egg issue; one step at a time
Looking forward to the updates

Working with a project this complex requires that I break it into smaller pieces with milestones that I must achieve at each step. I enjoy projects that start out very basic then become more complex over time.

The Opengl context (black window) is real. The buttons and logo were added to help visualize the layout.

The parser for the 3d mesh file is working and the Opengl rendering of the wireframe works also. Now I need a user interface with either GadTools & Intuition Window, or MUI/Zune & Custom Draw Window. I'll choose the easiest of the two.

So that's my first milestone - a working user interface where I can load a 3d mesh & render a wireframe using Opengl. At first a Single Viewport, then Quad View with four viewports showing different views.

As you may have guessed the 3d teapot wireframe is the Hello World of 3d Rendering Programs! ;-)

This project is starting up again. I'm trying to find where I left off last time.

I'm sure I was able to parse the 3d mesh file to load the vertices, faces then render the wireframe in opengl.

More to come later. :-)

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

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.

@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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

you could enable opengl when available

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.

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

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!

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.