|
|
|
|
|
| In this tutorial we’re going to cover the basics of Direct3D (also known as just “D3D”). First we’ll discuss it a bit and let you know what D3D actually is and what it can do. After you’ve been properly introduced to the beast, we’ll show you how to tame it a little bit – set it up, take it for a short stroll and then put it to sleep till next time. This tutorial can potentially be a little heavy, because we’re not going to just gloss over D3D; we’re going to look at it with a microscope – a small microscope.
This tutorial is probably one the most important ones you’ll go through, so make sure you understand everything before moving on to the next one.
Definitions COM: Component Object Model. COM is a Microsoft design specification (a way to architect your code) that allows different components to communicate with each other on the same machine regardless of what language they were programmed in. It’s basically a specification that separates interface from implementation (see the “Extra Reading” section for some useful links). Generally speaking, COM compatible methods/functions return a standard value known as an HRESULT. An HRESULT tells you how the method call went – whether it succeeded, failed, went out of memory, etc… Render: To draw or display something on the screen, like a 3D object or a 2D image. Render can also mean a lot of other things, but in the context of computer graphics we mean “display”. Vertex: Is a point in 3D space. A vertex will almost always have position x, y, z data attached to it, but it may also have other information – such as color. Pixel: Short for “picture element”. Any computer image you see is composed of many tiny dots. These dots are known as pixels. The number of dots you have in the horizontal direction is the image’s width in pixels and the number of dots you have going in the vertical directions is the image’s height in pixels. The width and height of an image is known as an image’s resolution. Keep in mind that your screen is actually an image as well, so it too has a resolution. Texture: A texture is usually a 2D image such as a bitmap or jpeg that is loaded into memory. The pixels in a texture are known as “texels” (texture elements). |
|
