Xith3D in a Nutshell
2
nd
edition
Authors: Marvin Fröhlich, Amos Wenger
Last update: January 10, 2008
Contents
Prologue: Xith3D history
3
Prologue: Featured games
4
0 Quick Rush
7
1a Our first empty scene
8
1b Ease this code
9
2 Adjusting the camera
10
3 Catching input events
11
4 Easy FPS counter
12
5 The first shape
13
6 Lights
15
7a Animation (Rotation)
19
7b Easy Rotation
20
7c Easy Rotation – an alternative way
20
8a Thread safe operations
22
8b Intervals
23
9a Picking
24
9b Alternative Picking
25
10 Screenshots
26
11 3D Models
27
12 Handling Resources
29
13 Choosing an OpenGL layer
31
14 Multipass rendering
32
15a HUD
33
15b More Widgets
36
15c Theming the HUD
40
16 Swing integration
41
Epilogue
42
Prologue: Xith3D history
Xith3D has been created in 2003 by David Yazel for his game, Magicosm. It's
born from the frustration developers had with Java3D (which was developed by
Sun, and has now been public-sourced), which Xith3D is heavily inspired of.
A screenshot of Magicosm, the game David Yazel developed Xith3D for.
Soon others joined David in development and the project has grown,
presenting to you now a full-featured 3D scenegraph designed specially for
games.
Development of Magicosm was discontinued and David stopped programming.
William Denniss is now the official maintainer of Xith3D. He used to manage
the community site, which has been replaced by a new site in 2006, thanks to
Amos Wenger. Known past or present Xith3D developers are: David Yazel,
William Denniss, Yuri VI. Guschin, Kevin Glass, Hawkwind, Jens Lehman, David
Wallace Croft, Arne Müller, Lilian Chamontin, Amos Wenger and Marvin
Fröhlich... (if we forgot anyone, let us know on Xith3D forum).
Xith3D development is now managed primarily on our site :
http://www.xith.org/ especially on the forum. You can even publish your game
on xith.org, if you want to (just ask on the forum).
Prologue: Featured Games
There're some cool games made with Xith3D. Some are unfinished, others
more tech demos than anything else. But they're good showcases of what is
possible with Xith3D.
Martian Madness
Made by Kevin Glass as a mean to improve his Xith3D knowledge. It's pretty
fun to play, although incomplete.
http://www.cokeandcode.com/node/307