Learning Irrlicht (well)

walkeraj · Post by **walkeraj** » Mon Oct 15, 2007 7:34 pm

I am a programmer looking to get into writing 3D applications with Irrlicht, but it has been a while since I studied realtime 3d rendering in college, and a lot has changed since 2002. I'm looking to benefit from some of the wisdom of the community by asking how they would teach someone about Irrlicht.

For instance, how would you guide someone studying the code for the first time? Would you recommend that they just dive right in, or should they study the subsystems in a particular order? How about books? Realtime Rendering by Moller? 3D Game Engine Design by Eberly?

Any suggestions are appropriate. I have already studied the tutorials and am looking to further my understanding of the mechanics and math behind the engine and WHY they are what they are.

rogerborg · Post by **rogerborg** » Tue Oct 16, 2007 11:40 am

Suggestions:

Put a breakpoint on the actual driver implementation calls (e.g. COpenGLDriver::drawVertexPrimitiveList()) and have a look at the call stack to see the progression through Irrlicht.

Likewise, start at the top of an API call, and trace it in to see what happens.

Find a part of Irrlicht that you don't like, and change it.

The question of why any particular part of Irrlicht is done the way that it is is generally because that got it working well enough for the purposes of whomever wrote it. I'm not being trite; if there's a part that looks like it could be done more efficiently, then it probably can be. Go for it.