Interactive 3D Graphics in Windows

Transcription

1 Interactive 3D Graphics in Windows

2 Springer New York Berlin Heidelberg Barcelona Budapest Hong Kong London Milan Paris Tokyo

3 Roy Hall Danielle Forsyth Springer

4 Additional material to this book can be downloaded from

5 Interactive 3D Graphics in Windows v Preface Today, most graphics books are focused on graphics theory, standards, rendering or specific graphics applications. Windows books address the use and nuances of the Windows environment and programming language books address specific language considerations. There are no books about developing interactive 3D graphic applications in Windows. There are several reasons for this; Windows based tools have not been available to develop 3D interactive applications, Windows historically ran on hardware which could not support interactive 3D graphics applications and very few graphics "experts" used Windows as a development platform. But 3D graphics capability is being added to Windows, Windows now runs on a range of processors which can support interactive graphics applications and "experts" are being forced to work in the environment that users know and use. For these reasons, we are writing a hands-on book and providing software tools (JOEY) which teach application developers how to write good interactive 3D applications in the Windows environment. Originally, it was not our intent to write either JOEY or this book. Our goal was to take years of experience in interactive 3D applications, rendering, and architecture and combine them into a next generation architectural modeling system. Unfortunately, there was an almost immediate realisation that the tools to build this type of application didn't exist in Windows. This was followed by an intense effort to build the appropriate tools, and the obvious observation that if we needed these tools, other application developers may need them also. We worked hard and, generally, had fun writing JOEY and this book. There are errors and we need your help to find them. There are also omissions; some are time related, some are related to the scope of the JOEY Toolkit and some were not conscious. Your help in identifying both errors and omissions is greatly appreciated. We do not want to drive a user interface standard. We want to use a well thought out, well implemented user interface toolkit in our own applications and we want a wide range of application users to have access to 3D. We hope you enjoy this book and JOEY.

6 vi Interactive 3D Graphics in Windows Acknowledgments Lots of application developers gave us great feedback during the development of this book and JOEY. We would particularly like to thank Don Brittain from Tsunami Software, Lee Robie and Kevin Linscott from SORe and Matthew Arrott from Autodesk. Gary Hirsch, the JOEY artist, has been a constant delight to work with and has helped us put humour into a topic that is known for its dryness. Wendy Steiner has helped to keep us sane during the long days and nights that led up to the completion of this book. Sam DeSimone has supported our rather unconventional business practices, made them all legal and done it with a great attitude and professional demeanour. Dr. Zeus has insisted that we retain some reasonable level of balance in our lives and helped immensely by agreeing to handle all customer support. Our families continue to encourage our efforts with kind words, open minds and lots of love. JOEY, well Haydn, has kept us on track. We love him like crazy. Companion Software: JOEY JOEY is the nickname of a seven year old that we hold dear. JOEY is also a set of high level development tools for writing Windows integrated, interactive 3D graphic applications. JOEY consists of two major components; a 3D toolkit for application developers and a set of viewers for integration of 3D data into OLE enabled applications. Today, graphic application developers must develop their own graphic support libraries (including the application look & feel). The mechanics of interaction between the user, application and graphic are a challenge. Development of 3D interactive applications is complex, graphics applications have an inconsistent look & feel and 3D data I objects cannot be easily transferred from application to application. JOEY was developed to solve these problems and will benefit anyone who is writing 3D interactive applications. It will reduce the time that is needed to develop the application, provide the user with new viewing capability within and across OLE applications and minimize the learning time for each application by providing a standard mechanism for interacting with 3D datal objects. JOEY provides performance sensitive camera interaction and mechanisms to aid in making application interaction performance sensitive.

7 Interactive 3D Graphics in Windows vii Throughout the development of JOEY, we were constantly asked where it fits. Is it rendering, a new framework, or a proposed standard? No. It is a thin layer of 3D support classes and services that fit between MFC and the application and provide a component object mapping into the renderer you choose to use. [MFC application classes)...oey3d support classes Your application classes.p '?i Component rendering interface 000 JOEY provides: 3D graphic windows for SOl and MDI applications -full setup of graphic windows - interactive camera control - grids and grid hit testing/locking - performance sensitive rendering control during interaction - tools for hit testing Camera and grid toolbar and camera feedback for the status bar OLE linking and embedding for in-place activation of 3D applications 3D metafiles with OLE server enabled viewers Clipboard support for 3D metafiles, enhanced metafiles and bitmaps OLE automation support Renderer independent access to multiple graphics systems including OpenGL and AD! 3D Versatile 3D geometric base classes Context sensitive help templates Editing dialogues for cameras, grids, materials and lights

8 viii Interactive 3D Graphics in Windows JOEY is included with this book in order to explain and allow you to experiment with the functionality described in the book. The version of JOEY that you have received is called the JOEY Toolkit; it can be copied and shared with other developers. It cannot be distributed as a part of your commercially available application. The JOEY Viewer is also included on this disk and can be used, copied and distributed freely. The JOEY Development Environment, a more extensible version of JOEY is available for use in commercial applications. Contact Crisis in Perspective, Inc. at @Compuserve.comformore details. Technical support is available to all registered JOEY users. Please contact: Dr. Zeus at @compuserve.com This is a hands-on book. You need to install the software to use the book. Before installing the software, please read readme. txt. Software Requirements It is assumed that the JOEY user has a working knowledge of Microsoft Windows, C++, Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) and OLE and has current releases of all of this software installed on their computer. If this is not the case, you should not attempt to use JOEY. It won't work. JOEY requires a 386, 486 or Pentium class computer. There are no special memory or graphics requirements (other than the requirements of the software above) for JOEY but 20 Mb. of available disk space is required. JOEY will run on Windows NT or Windows 95. The version in this book runs with OpenGL or ADI 3D.

9 Interactive 3D Graphics in Windows ix Contents PRA.CTICE... 9 IMPLEMENTATION THEORY BIBLIOGRA.PHY INDEX A Framework for Interactive 3D Applications... 9, 187, Creating a Framework with MFC AppWizard... 12, 189, Adding the JOEY 3D Graphics User Interface to the Framework... 14, 192, Adding Application Read and Draw... 29, 199, Integrating Graphic Applications Into Windows... 37, 203, OLE Server Capabilities - Linking and Embedding... 38,203, Clipboards, Files, and 3D Viewers... 42, 208, OLE Automation... 47, 215, Graphic Display and Interaction... 55, 221, Graphic Elements... 55,221, 305

10 x Interactive 3D Graphics in Windows 3.2 Graphic Representations of Data , 243, Manipulating Data ,244, Performance Sensitive Interaction ,262, Extending JOEY , 265, Dimensioning ,265, Adding Render Devices ,266, Creating a JOEY Extension.dll ,267, D OLE Extensions ,267,358 Bibliography Index A detailed section table of contents can be found at the beginning of Practice, Implementation and Theory.

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