[Gardon]

I'm stepping it up a notch from 2D, and boy what a hassle! I'm not complaining, but am just so completely amazed. With 2D, if you can blit something on the screen you're golden. You can create your own animations, camera systems, etc., and your logic is your limit. With 3D, I've spent over 2 months just designing the engine alone, and I'm no where close to being finished.

There's the Camera, animation handling, input handling, lighting, materials, textures, and so much more. But I think it will be worth it when I'm done :)

Anyone else here working in 3D?

[Ninkazu]

I'm doing research in realistic image synthesis. I agree that 3D is hard.

[Mattias Gustavsson]

I've been doing 3D for years, worked with it professionally for 8 years, and I still agree it's much harder than 2D.

In fact, for the games I make myself, I stay well away from 3D, it just adds a lot of hassle and it's not really worth the effort, for most games :-) 2D forever :D
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www.mattiasgustavsson.com - My blog
www.rivtind.com - My Fantasy world and isometric RPG engine
www.pixieuniversity.com - Software 2D Game Engine

[Gardon]

[RampantCoyote]

Well, I've been doing 3D for ... well, many years, both as a hobby, and professionally since 1994. Though it was a bit easier in 1994... I was working on Playstation games back then, and the 3D was much simpler (and uglier).

Anyway - I'd say "yes and no." In some ways, I think the focus on realistic 3D graphics is killing gameplay. And it can be a lot harder to set up.

But on the other hand, once you have a model built and rigged, you can animate it from any angle relatively simple. A lot of stuff just kinda falls together at that point. So I think 3D actually makes some parts of development easier.

But I think it's overrated by many mainstream gamers.
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Tales of the Rampant Coyote - Old-School Game Developer talks Indie Games, RPGs, and the Games Biz

[Gardon]

I completely agree that graphics are overrated. Gameplay comes first in my opinion. I have played several games that weren't as good graphically as others, but completely owned at gameplay.

The bottom line is that I want something I enjoy playing, not something that wow's me with all the visual effects.

I'm just looking to get the basics up and running, which is VERY HARD for someone who has only done 2D work up until this point. I guess it will just take some time.

-Gardon

[RedSlash]

Kinda funny. When I started programming, 2D programming consisted of using looped memcpy()'s to blit an image. Updating the screen required multiple switch bank calls written in ASM (Vesa 1.x).

By the time I started learning 3D, updating the screen is one call to glutSwapBuffers().

I think the key point to 3D graphics is understanding the 3D system. Stuff like how lighting affects objects, how textures are mapped, etc.. Although there are more things to consider than 2D, but you'll probably find that overall, once you've got all your models, textures, lights and stuff setup, then everything else is automatic.

[DeveloperX]

Gardon, I highly recommend these books:

http://www.amazon.com/Direct3D-Programming-Prima-Techs-Development/dp/0761534296

http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Animation-DirectX-Focus-Development/dp/1592000371

Between those two books you should have all the info you need.

I've got them both, and while I am using OpenGL in Linux, I still learned a LOT of techniques from these books.

Goodluck.
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Principal Software Architect
Rambling Indie Games, LLC

See my professional portfolio

[Gardon]

Thanks DeveloperX. I'll check those out.

[Adam]

You think 3D is hard?
Try doing it from scratch :P.
http://hulkamaniac.com/flash/mss3/
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https://numbatlogic.com

[DeveloperX]

[RedSlash]

Yes, those were the days when 3D programming actually required you to write math to do anything useful. Nowadays, the math is already written for you. Filling polygons manually was a mess too..

[Nodtveidt]

Having a basic understanding of trig still helps a lot, even after at least half the work is done for you already.
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If you play a Microsoft CD backwards you can hear demonic voices. The scary part is that if you play it forwards it installs Windows. - wallace

[RampantCoyote]

Not entirely from scratch - but I wrote the engine for Void War using the DirectX 8 SDK. I wrote it to keep my game-engine writing skills sharp.



In retrospect, I shoulda used some other engine, like Torque, for it. It would have been nice to be able to focus on the game instead of the engine so much. But that's what I'm doing now.
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Tales of the Rampant Coyote - Old-School Game Developer talks Indie Games, RPGs, and the Games Biz

[Mattias Gustavsson]

Here's my attempt to do a DX9 engine:


As is so common when doing 3d, I never got around to actually work on the game, I kept improving the tech (oh, let's have skinned animation, and per pixel lighting, and stencil buffer shadows etc) :P I'll stay clear from 3d from now on :D

As for doing things from scratch, here's a render from my software renderer (actually the one included in the Pixie source code available from my site):



I find the math of 3d quite straightforward, but it is just that much harder to produce 3d games as a lone developer than it is 2D games :D
_________________
www.mattiasgustavsson.com - My blog
www.rivtind.com - My Fantasy world and isometric RPG engine
www.pixieuniversity.com - Software 2D Game Engine