Where to start with BIG projects?

dsedov · 2006-09-20 12:30:23 UTC

Hello!

What limitations of GLUT have you run in to? Also how SDL is better over GLUT and what problems did you run into using SDL with OpenGL?

ngrava:

SDL provides just about everything for you in a very simple and easy to use package. It can be a little to simple though. for main loop stuff, you just need to make a while statement that says, “While not 0, do the contents of this loop”. Then inside the loop you have all your checks, callbacks, frame advances and screen redraws. Those are usually the API specific stuff and SDL provides just about all of that. But SDL isn’t the only way to go. It’s just nice because it so simple and provides handing of images, OGL, sound, mouse and keyboard. I think it was intended for games but it’s really useful as simple starter platform. Anyway, I’m starting to sound as if I’m trying to sell SDL. But it’s quite the opposite. I actually ran into some issues that made it really hard to continue (Mostly to do with Open GL and SDL) so I’ve been looking at other libraries too. Unfortunately, there isn’t anything else as simple as SDL that I’ve been able to find.

GLUT is where I started and I continually go back to it now and then and try to force it to do things it wasn’t meant to do. It’s very basic. OpenGL, mouse, keyboard, menus and a simple right click menu. That’s it. But again, as a starter package, it does it’s job. The nice thing about GLUT and SDL is that they are totally cross platform. That’s something that’s really important to me. One of the early notions that I had about Oasis is that there just isn’t any kind of good 3D animation program for Linux (other then Blender). So whatever I make has to be able to run on Linux and OSX.

dsedov · 2006-09-20 12:38:46 UTC

Ohh… also, what graphics programming comunity are you also visiting. I doubt there are any forums for programming DCC kind of stuff (like Maya, Shake etc). But there must be something on-line to help getting started.

Also my interest is more in creating programs to work with 2K log imagery then 3D, but that staff is also hard, and relies on fast OpenGL even more. (look at hardware requirements for programs like Nucoda, Scratch, Baselight, iQ - they all require you to use Quadro FX 4500)

rendermaniac · 2006-09-20 12:50:50 UTC

You may also want to look at WxWidgets http://www.wxwidgets.org/ and Qt http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt which are cross platform and have a lot more widgets.

However if you want to do anything really fancy beyond what a toolkit provides - like transparency etc then you will have to build it yourself from OpenGL, and all the control handles etc. It’s a lot of work!

Simon

playmesumch00ns · 2006-09-21 01:58:48 UTC

I’d second simon’s suggestion. Have you looked at python and PyQt? python and Qt are fast becoming de-facto standards in the industry.

I’d strongly suggest doing the main UI and logic code in python, and binding your c++ data types and complex operations to it, probably using boost::python.

ngrava · 2006-09-21 14:22:14 UTC

Actually, Simon also pointed out the reason that I’m not going to use a UI kit. If you look at the Oasis mock up image on page… ahhh… 2 I think? anyway, that image is how I want it to look “exactly”. There is no interface kit for that. I have to build it all on my own. It’s really not that difficult once you have a few primitives built, you can use them all over the place. That’s what I’ve been doing mostly. Figuring out how to make panels slide out form the sides of windows and having them snap into place when they get close to each other. I had a version that just used OpenGL inside GLUT that worked. What I did was to draw the 3D data first using a perspective matrix then switch to GLUT_Ortho veiw (or something like that I can remember right now) and draw the 2D interface. however, if you want to use the GL selection buffer, your screwed. The selection buffer doesn’t handle what happens when you want to grab a handle that is covered by a panel. So, in that case, you have to build some kind of ray casting selection engine that looks at everything under the mouse. I think there my be a way to make it so that you have two buffers. One for the interface and one for the 3D. Anyway, enough about that. I’m really not sure anyway about all that. I’ve never gotten a selection buffer to work just yet.

seadonghai · 2006-10-03 21:51:09 UTC

Hi , I think your project is great ,but Could I give you some advice?

1,UI is not the core of 3d software ,structure is the important.

2,what is your 3d software’s strong suit.Dynamic ? crowd animation ?.. …

I like simulate crowd animation by fuzzy logic and skelecton animation .I colud help you if you like.

thank you

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