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Closed 10 years ago.
What are the best guides / tutorials / books / websites for someone with minimal experience (or none) in the world of 3D graphics programming?
I realize that the fundamentals of 3D graphics and mathematics apply across platform specific 3D library implementations such as OpenGL, DirectX, WPF etc..
Therefore it would be useful if answers would explain if they focus on a specific library implementation, on the fundamentals, or maybe both.
Rationale for for asking this question:
With Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) 3D on the scene, it's realistic for many programmers to now seriously consider using 3D for their applications, where this would have been almost impossible even a few years ago.
I'm sure there are many programmers out there, like me, who find the leap from 2D to 3D a very big one.
I recommend that you implement a simple software based 3d rendering engine. Simple stuff like line, quads, lighting etc. You will learn a whole lot more about 3d programming in general, and it will give you a good prescriptive on 3d graphics and it's limitations.
This should get you started:
http://www.devmaster.net/articles/software-rendering/part1.php
Petzold's 3D Programming for Windows is an obvious start if you are doing WPF.
For Opengl the book is available free online , there are also tutorials at NeHe although OpenGL does require that you understand the details of transforms to really do more than cut and paste
I thought I'd start by providing this resource I found during my own research:
The Twelve days of WPF 3D by Eric Sink.
It is a series of articles focusing on WPF, from the beginner to intermediate level.
It focuses on getting practical things done with WPF 3D, rather then fundamental 3D math etc, but is great for answering some common questions most WPF 3D programmers eventually come across.
One site I have been recommended previously is GameDev. It is full of articles and tutorials for 3D game development.
What do you want to learn to do? build a graphics / game engine? or USE a graphics or game engine? ..
I chose the easy route. I am using an available engine - www.3dgamestudio.com - so I can focus on the actual game. I feel that reinventing the wheel takes too much time.
A good handle on the math behind things can be useful. This tutorial is a good place to start.
One book I'd definitely recommend is Computer Graphics by Foley and Van Dam.
Here is a good hands-on tutorial for getting started quickly with a little bit of mathematical theory included: http://www.kindohm.com/technical/wpf3dtutorial.htm
Related
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Closed 10 years ago.
I started programming about 6 months back and have a decent knowledge in how to code in C. I have mainly used it to implement elementary algorithms or solve Project Euler questions (reached 50 now :) )
What I really want to learn since a long time is game programming. Ie make simple 2D games like snake, or pocket tanks. By simple, I no way mean the amount of work or effort it's going to take to make these games
I've tried searching the net but have had no luck with that. Could anyone point me in the right direction?
What exactly will I need to learn? Where do I start?
Game Programming requires a lot of Computer Science stuff on top of creativity. By Computer Science stuff I mean Algorithms, Data Structures, Computer Architecture, Computer Graphics, Operating System Internals, Artificial Intelligence & at least basic familiarity with Mathematics & Physics + experience on playing Games + Passion for Games. As you seem to be a good Algorithmic coder (Coding problems on Project Euler) so it should not be very difficult for you.
Now coming to your question one simple way to start is: Microsoft XNA (which lets you just go into game programming without having too much knowledge on above areas, ofcourse having it will be an advantage for you in longer run). Check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_XNA
You can also check out this book: http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Game-Programming-Michael-Morrison/dp/0672326590/ref=pd_sim_b_4
I have read the above (It's in C/C++/Win32) and it is really a good resource on implementing basic games which will give you a very good start to jump to XNA as a next step.
You could go with graphics.h. I am saying this because, when I were in your stage, I began with Worm and nibbles game, a very easy game, which can be constructed with drawPoly function. I used drawPoly as my implementation, but you could use you won.
In addition to that, graphics.h will provide many user-defined functions, to draw lines,rectangles,polygens. It also provide functions to color them in many different ways.
So, When you want to start gaming in C, I would suggest graphics.h as a good starting point.
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Closed 11 years ago.
I'm a 17 year old high school student who just started to learn C programming 1 week ago. I've also had some very basic experience in web design(+ a little web programming with javascript and php. I once made a website with contact form).
Anyway, I'm very interested in AI and as a school project, I thought that i'll build a chess engine and a robotic arm that physically moves the pieces.
Now, my deadline for which i have to finish the engine is 7 months away, (and the arm has to be completed in a year).
Do you think it's feasible for a total beginner to program a chess engine in 7 months(and eventually build a robotic arm using that engine?)
Thank you very much!
lol, great ambition, but it will take a hurculean effort on your part to get it done. Building the engine itself in your spare time will take quite a bit, as the AI for a chess game is pretty complicated, you have to tell the program to think ahead at least 7 moves with an end goal in mind, not to mention you will have to program the piece that interacts with the robot arm. You could theoretically cheat/not reinvent the wheel by utilizing some open source chess game and save yourself a few months of programming just in that piece.
I think, that it is better to choose some real task to start with for practice. Of course, you can divide the task in steps. But in chess the first step - GUI - is real for you. But the second - the most primitive AI - is extremely hard. It is the specific of the game.
If you take reversi/othello as the subject game, then creating a very primitive AI could be possible. I don't believe that you can manage recursive thinking, but one-step thinking, with evaluation of the positions and of course, the GUI for the game is possible. But you will have to work really hard. If you are interested, I could give you a pair of advices for this game realzation - I did it myself twice on different machines. But robotic hand is out of question.
Of course, if you are a genius, you can manage everything. ( I am not joking. You can never tell...)
And C is not the best language for AI. It is not even one of better ones.
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Closed 10 years ago.
I need topic ideas related to AI on which I will base my thesis. I am mostly interested in Genetic Algorithm and Neural Networks techniques. I already got the some ideas, but non of them seems to hit me!
Any help will be really appreciated!! :)
Russ Greiner has a great list of project topics for his machine learning course, so that's a great place to start.
Both GAs and ANNs are learners/classifiers. So I ask you the question, what is an interesting "thing" to learn? Maybe it's:
Detecting cancer
Predicting the outcome between two sports teams
Filtering spam
Detecting faces
Reading text (OCR)
Playing a game
The sky is the limit, really!
I think your thesis should involve a project of a high-carnage shooting game in the style of Smash TV or Crimsonland that uses the player as the fitness function for a GA engine: generating behavioral control code for the enemies and evaluating fitness by how long the controlled entity survives and/or how much damage it does to the player.
That'd be fun.
What's a problem that you are passionate about? If you pick something that you love and are interested in you will undoubtedly do a better job and learn more. I love finance but it is not for everyone. GA's are best at optimization problems so maybe portfolio optimization using GAs and ANNs.
Maybe predict which blog posts someone will like. I have always wanted to do that but I have not gotten around to it?
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Closed 10 years ago.
My question is very similar in spirit to this question: What is the best plotting library for Python?
What is my best bet for plotting data in C? Am I better off forgoing a library and just generating data that I can feed directly into gnuplot?
My impetus for this question is being able to visualize DSP transformations while studying the excellent resources found in an earlier question of mine. So the focus is really just 2D plots, histograms, etc.; 3D isn't as important right now.
I think you are on the right track with gnuplot. For what you want, it's very powerful and flexible.
However, you may want to consider writing to gnuplot directly from your application instead of creating data and feeding it. There is an ANSI C API to gnuplot available.
MathGL is cross-platform (Windows/Linux/MacOS) free (GPL, LGPL for core) plotting library. It is fast, have a lot of graphics types, can plot huge data arrays, can produce bitmap and vector (EPS/SVG/U3D) output, can use OpenGL, can run in console (don't need X), have many interfaces (Fortran/Python/... to combine with other languages), have FLTK/Qt widgets, can create its own window with plotting, and so on.
libgd. But if you don't have a lot of data to plot, gnuplot is a good way to go, as others suggested.
I've found PLplot which seems to be interesting. I'm trying it right now and I'll publish here a quick review about it as I'll know something more about it.
Update: As first blush it seems to be badly designed, since it adds interactivity to the application (IMHO a library should never directly interface with the user unless this is the library's purpose).
On Mac OS X you may also feed your data directly into Plot which features Perl-based scripting and a command-line interface for non-interactive data processing:
http://plot.micw.eu
In terms of a Mac OS X C-ish plotting framework see core-plot.
have you looked at AntiGrain? it's multiplatform
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Closed 10 years ago.
I am very new to WPF and I am interested in learning it. I have gone through some tutorials, but I am looking for a website or book containing projects/assignments along with solutions so that you can code and learn. As I work through a project, I'd like to be able to refer to a solution in case I get stuck somewhere.
Can someone please share any links/material if you have which can give me some WPF Projects/assignments to work on along with solution.
Thanks.
I would search StackOverflow ... as there is already a lot of good stuff on this topic.
In particular, check out: WPF Sample Applications
But here are some additional links to get you started in WPF:
What are the best resources for learning WPF?
What did you find hardest to understand when learning WPF?
How to begin WPF development?
What WPF books would you recommend?
What applications could I study to understand DataModel-View-ViewModel?
Good luck!
I found http://www.drwpf.com/blog/ very helpful.
I think nobody has referred to the WPF Boot camp, it's 3 days free training by the experts and it was really helpful.
If you want to directly download all videos try this
You should take a look at MVVM pattern: NDC2009 MVVM talk is really good.
I've read a few WPF books. This one has been my favorite:
Pro WPF in C# 2008
I would also recommend this one:
WPF in Action with Visual Studio 2008
Sounds like you are looking for some hands-on labs. Check these out:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=05755a9d-98fa-4f16-bfdc-023e3fd34763&displaylang=en