Irrlicht 1.7 Realtime 3D Engine Beginner’s Guide

Create complete 2D and 3D applications with this cross-platform, high performance engine

• A comprehensive guide for C++ programmers to learn Irrlicht from scratch
• Learn to add, manipulate, and animate meshes
• Manage scenes, nodes, and cameras
• Use particle systems, shaders, and lights for enhancement
• Written in beginner’s guide style with exhaustive explanations of code and plenty of screenshots added in for ease of learning

In Detail

The Irrlicht Engine is a cross-platform high-performance real-time 3D engine written in C++. It features a powerful high-level API for creating complete 3D and 2D applications such as games or scientific visualizations.

Irrlicht 1.7.1 Realtime 3D Engine Beginner’s Guide will teach you to master all that is required to create 2D and 3D applications using Irrlicht, beginning right from installation and proceeding step-by-step to deployment.

Beginning with installation, this book guides you through creating a basic template application, followed by meshes, overlays, and UI. You will then scan through data types, nodes, scenes, camera, lights, and particle systems. Finally, you will learn about some advanced concepts such as handling data, files, and shaders, followed by the last stage – deployment.

This book is a step-by-step guide to Irrlicht that starts at an easy level for beginners and then gradually works to more advanced topics through clear code examples and a number of demos, which illustrate theoretical concepts.

What you will learn from this book

• Set up Irrlicht on different platforms
• Create your very first empty application using different platforms and IDEs
• Apply textures to meshes, load, and access them
• Add and manipulate images
• Change the graphical layout of the user interface
• Learn about data types to access objects in a 3D space and facilitate the workflow
• Manipulate and manage scenes
• Set up a custom node and animate it using Node Animator
• Learn how to move the camera
• Add prefabricated and custom cameras
• Add, manage, and manipulate lights
• Create eye-candy effects with particle systems
• Handle data and files with Irrlicht
• Implement shaders for complex effects
• Deploy your application

Approach

A beginner’s guide with plenty of screenshots and explained code.

Who this book is written for

If you have C++ skills and are interested in learning Irrlicht, this book is for you. Absolutely no knowledge of Irrlicht is necessary for you to follow this book!