Game Programming Class12

Safe Cropping zones

Show safe zones for XBox

Billboards

Billboards are basically textured squares (two triangles) that point towards the camera and appear to be a 3D model. They are cheaper and easier to work with than models many early 3D games consisted mainly of billboards. Billboards are still used to fake 3D objects.

The XNA 3DAudio example from
http://creators.xna.com/en-US/sample/3daudio

has a good example of using billboards. This example also demonstrates 3D audio.

Quad Drawer Class

SpriteEntity/Quad Sprite I changed the name

I've added these two classes to our IntroGameLibrary Project. Here's an example. I did change the projection view size and some of the scales of the billboards.

IntroQuad Project

Meshes

A mesh is a collection of vertices, faces and edges that define a 3d shape. XNA can import .X or .Fbx files. .X files are Files created for DirectX, while FBX is an platform independent 3D mesh file type.

FBX is now a platform and has its own API and SDK from Autodesk

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=6837478

Mesh Example IntroMesh.zip

IntroMesh

You can get some free models from TurboSquid, or you can make your own models with Blender.

Blender

Blender is a free 3D program. It can export fbx models for xna.

1. Installing Blender
2. Getting Started with Blender 3D and XNA
3. Blender Manual
4. Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro
5. Beginner_Tutorials/Print_version

Homework

Try out blender. Make a model and load it into XNA and draw a picture with models