Yes, it’s that time of year again. I wish you all a wonderful and Merry Christmas and a happy new year.I have no idea what your year has been like; what fun you’ve had and what challenges you’ve faced. Hopefully you can look back on 2016 and have many things to be grateful for. May […]
The previous tutorial’s source-code included animation, but I said that would be a topic for another day. Well, today is that day. I’m going to go through the code I added to animate the cube. IMPORTANT: While this tutorial is about Warp3D Nova, the animation code below is almost 100% generic. You could reuse it to […]
Today I’m going to show you another way to draw coloured triangles with OpenGL (ES). It’ll look less interesting than the previous tutorial’s method. However, it’s a good way to introduce using multiple vertex attributes and you’ll need that for almost everything from here on out.Per Vertex ColourAs the name suggests, vertex attributes are “attributes […]
Time to put the theory learnt last time into practise. This means turning the phong model into shader code, and feeding the GPU the extra data required (surface normals, light/material properties, etc.).Step 1: Copy the Previous Tutorial’s CodeAs usual we’ll kickstart the process by reusing the previous tutorial’s code. So download the code now, and […]
This post is a bit random because it has nothing to do with technology. It’s about a South Island parrot that the NZTA spotted setting up road cones in front of the Homer tunnel. How is this relevant? Well, it’s a Kea, and this company is called “Kea Sigma Delta.” Yes, the same Kea that […]
The next step after “hello triangle” tutorials is usually adding per-vertex colour, but I’m going to do something different. I’m going to give you a glimpse at the power and flexibility that programmable shaders give you. In this tutorial we’ll generate colours entirely on the GPU. It’s something called “procedural textures.”Textures are images that are […]
Simulating lighting is critical to realistic 3D rendering. After all, light is what allows us to see the real world. Our first 3D rendering in Warp3D Nova looked pretty flat due to the complete lack of lighting. It’s time to fix this by adding light to the scene.IMPORTANT: 3D lighting calculations involve vector algebra. If […]
Last time I showed you how to set up a windowed OpenGL ES 2 (GLES2) context on AmigaOS. Now lets draw something. This tutorial will show you how to use shaders to draw stuff (a simple triangle, in this case).It closely follows a similar Warp3D Nova tutorial, and you’re welcome to compare the two.NOTE: While […]
Curious how OpenGL ES 2 (GLES2) + Warp3D Nova’s performance compares to MiniGL + Warp3D? Well, the first comparison is here courtesy of the Entwickler-X team. They’ve just released (as at 1 Nov. 2016) a video showing an upcoming game running on both MiniGL and GLES2. The game is built using X-Engine, a game engine […]
Like other Application Programmers Interfaces (APIs), Warp3D Nova has little “gotchas” that catch programmers out. These are common pitfalls that new programmers fall into. Even experienced programmers can make these mistakes; yes, even the API’s designer (i.e., me).Binding Vertex Arrays to the Wrong Shader InputsSetting up vertex arrays is a multi-step process and there are […]
