DirectX4VB.Com - All You Need For Multimedia Visual Basic Programming

Loading Pre-Created Objects
Author : Jack Hoxley
Written : 22nd December 2000
Contact : [Web] [Email]
Download : Graph_08.Zip [209 Kb]

Up till this point we've been manually generating any geometry that we need - squares and cubes mostly. You may or may not have given any thought to how commercial / proper games work when generating animation and complex 3D models. It doesn't take a genius to realise that these models are not hard-coded into the game - doing that would require 1000's of lines for each frame of an animation - not a very clever way of doing things.

Instead we load objects in that have been created in another program, usually by a 3D artist. We read the file, load any relevent textures and materials and hold it in memory - until we want to render it. There is another advantage as well - you can edit the file after the final compilation of the executable. If you decide that you want to lower the triangle count a bit you can open up the file, play around with it and then save it - and the effects will be mirrored in the game the next time you play it. You can also have different versions of a model - low detail, normal detail and high detail - so you can allow the user to play the game on a low end computer, but if they have performance hardware they'll be able to get something a little bit more special...

From now onwards we'll be using externally created objects rather than generating our own hard-coded geometry. Read the next section on how to create your own geometry.

The first thing to remember is that you'll need a basic knowledge of how 3D models work - if you've read all the previous lessons then you should have a reasonable idea; but if you still dont get it I suggest you go looking around the internet for some basic 3D-modelling tutorials (It's too bigger a topic to cover here).

Secondly you're going to need some software. There are hundreds of cheap / free 3D modellers around, but if you're serious about making good models you'd be wise to look into one of the more professional packages (such as 3D Studio Max or Lightwave). Or, if you have no 3D-modelling skills you could go looking for an artist who's good at 3D work - and hope he/she has the relevent software.

Thirdly you'll be needing a convertor. Direct3D uses it's own format ".X" files - there is a convertor included in the SDK for converting ".3DS" files to ".X" files, but you'll need to get it from the microsoft site (I do believe it would infringe on the EULA agreement if I uploaded it here...).

Whilst there are many other things to bare in mind, the last important one for the programmer is the model complexity. Depending on how your engine is designed you'll need to impose some realistic limits on the models that can be used. For example, if you're aiming for a middle-range specification (Low end 3D card and reasonable processor) you'll probably be wanting to keep the triangle count in each scene to around 3000 (give or take a litte); and if your game has a landscape in it that takes up 1500 of those triangles you have to find a way of fitting all your players and/or world objects into the remaining 1500 triangles...

Thankfullly, the very basics of loading an object into Direct3D is quite simple; it's only when you get onto animation and skinning it gets complicated. As mentioned above we need an object, which I've done - and you can see in the sample file. All it is is a sphere with "DirectX 4 VB" rotating around and around... I made it in 3DSMax 2, then used the SDK convertor (Conv3ds.exe) to convert it into an X-File. If you have this utility you should use this command line: "Conv3DS -m -V2 file.3ds", the "-V2" part is optional, but it provides you with some basic information, you can add other parameters, but you must remember to keep the "-m" in there.

So now we have an object to play around with. I'm going to rewrite a part of the "Lesson 07 : An introduction to Lighting" to use objects - partly because the lighting is already setup in there; it's also much easier to see the affect of lighting in this example than in the proper example (because of the more complex geometry). Here's the new code to go in the declarations section, note that we no longer have to play around with custom vertex formats (or vertices full stop.).

The "Mesh" object is what we're going to use to hold all our information, we'll be using the D3DX library to help us as well (note the "D3DX" prefix to the variable name). Then there are the materials and textures - both open ended arrays; After we've loaded the object into memory we'll query it as to how many textures and materials there are and resize these arrays accordingly.

The next part is a complete re-write of the "InitGeometry( )" routine, everything except the error handler has been changed in this procedure - so here goes:

Private Function InitialiseGeometry() As Boolean


On Error GoTo BailOut: '//Setup our Error handler

'//0. Any variables required
    Dim mtrlBuffer As D3DXBuffer '//Holds some useful data for us...
    Dim I As Long 'Loop variable
    Dim TextureFile As String 'the texture required

'//1. Get the data from the file
    Set Mesh = D3DX.LoadMeshFromX(App.Path & "\lesson08.x", D3DXMESH_MANAGED, D3DDevice, Nothing, mtrlBuffer, nMaterials)

    If Mesh Is Nothing Then GoTo BailOut: '//Dont continue if the above call did not work

'//2. Allocate the space required for the materials and textures used:
    ReDim MeshMaterials(nMaterials) As D3DMATERIAL8
    ReDim MeshTextures(nMaterials) As Direct3DTexture8

'//3. Now we fill our arrays with the information required
    For I = 0 To nMaterials - 1

'//Get D3DX to copy the data that we loaded from the file into our structure
        D3DX.BufferGetMaterial mtrlBuffer, I, MeshMaterials(I)

'//Fill in the missing gaps - the Ambient properties
        MeshMaterials(I).Ambient = MeshMaterials(I).diffuse

        '//get the name of the texture used for this part of the mesh
        TextureFile = D3DX.BufferGetTextureName(mtrlBuffer, I)

'//Now create the texture
        If TextureFile <> "" Then 'Dont try to create a texture from an empty string
            Set MeshTextures(I) = D3DX.CreateTextureFromFileEx(D3DDevice, App.Path & "\" & TextureFile, 128, 128, D3DX_DEFAULT, _
             0, D3DFMT_UNKNOWN, D3DPOOL_MANAGED, D3DX_FILTER_LINEAR, _
             D3DX_FILTER_LINEAR, 0, ByVal 0, ByVal 0)
        End If

    Next I

'//4. Output some info to the debug window - not required, just interesting
    Debug.Print "Number of Faces in mesh: " & Mesh.GetNumFaces
    Debug.Print "Number of Vertices in mesh: " & Mesh.GetNumVertices


InitialiseGeometry = True
Exit Function
BailOut:
Debug.Print "Error occured in InitGeometry() Code"
InitialiseGeometry = False
End Function

It's all fairly explanatory - and as D3DX does most of the hard work we can sit back and do very little. The last part of (3) can be changed slightly to suit your needs - where this example uses CreateTextureFromFileEx( ) you could either rework it to use different sizes, transparencies and so on, or you could replace it with the old CreateTextureFromFile( ) method - if you really dont know much about the texture, or just plain dont care.

At this point in time we have a valid object in memory - something we can now play with.

Rendering our object isn't greatly difficult either. Although you still need to manage any matrices and transformations that you want. An interesting thing to note is how the lighting affects the frame rate; as mentioned in the previous lesson, different lights have different costs - this was quite difficult to see when we were using such a small geometry set (8 vertices), but as we're now using 100's you'll notice the difference much more. For example, on my computer I get 170fps for Directional Lights, 160fps for point lights and 145fps for spot lights - a definate trend downwards there.

As you've already noticed (I hope) we've loaded our object as parts - we have a number of materials and textures, whilst you haven't seen it yet, the mesh is divided into a certain number of parts (1 for each texture/material combination). As we're going to render these in a loop it is perfectly possible to apply different transformations to each section - if you know which section is which (trial and error really - or you could write a configuration file format). Essentially, therefore, you could have every object in your game in one massive file - as long as you knew which order they came in - but this makes for difficult editing later on.

Not greatly complicated really - just remember that this part must go between a Device.BeginScene and Device.EndScene call. Hopefully you should see something like this:

You can download the source code for this lesson from the top of the page, which i suggest you do...

Main Site	Links	Resources	Tutorials
News	VB Gaming	Code Downloads	DirectX 7
Contact Webmaster	VB Programming	Product Reviews	DirectX 8
	General Multimedia	Articles	DirectX 9
			Miscellaneous