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From (nearly) zero to knowing what rendering and shaders are all about

These courses assume that you...

  • understand basic Python (you don't need to know the whole standard library by heart, but sentences like "So we'll import a class from this module, instantiate an object from it, and call these methods" should not scare you any more)
  • can pip install panda3d (preferably in a virtualenv, but it's your system...)
  • can verify that your system is running OpenGL 4.30 or higher (e.g. by running glxinfo)
  • are not afraid of math. Computer graphics is one of the purest expressions of computing being mathematics in motion, so a basic fluency in several fields of math will be necessary to get anywhere with anything. For a start though, we will mostly get away with sin, cos, and multiplying a matrix with a vector.

Few courses are complete yet, and neither is the list of courses itself complete. As long as I do get the "onboarding Python developers to Panda3D" part done eventually, I am fully committing to scope creep, so as to let you loose one the whole wide world of game development.

  • Preparatory courses: The requirements above are a bit harsh, and contain interesting topics that should be explained here; In particular: * Links to outside material like programming courses and installation guides * Math, applied in Panda3D

  • Hello Panda3D: Getting the basics out of the way. This is a quick onboarding to Panda3D that demonstrates: * Tasks and events, allowing you to structure your applications, * The scene graph, allowing you to structure your 3D scenes.

  • Scene Graph deep dive: Everything to know about NodePath.

  • Geometric Modeling: A deeper look into meshes, animations, and textures. After this course, you will understand how the objects in your scene are represented as data.

    TODO: lacks shapekeys

  • The CPU side of rendering: Panda3D's rendering process. We explore how * Panda3D sets itself up for operation, * your scenes get turned into sequences of commands that are issued to your graphics card.

  • The GPU side of rendering: This explains what happens when the rendering process hits the metal, and how we control it with shaders.

    TODO: Full refactor.

  • The science of light and color: Physics-based Rendering (PBR), from Lambertian diffusion to all the effects

  • Rendering pipelines * How to cut down on the number of light calculations: * Forward Shading: The unoptimized default. * Deferred Shading: Render object parameters to texture, then light those. O(m+n) is better than O(m*n), and overdraw matterss less. Can't do transparency. * Hybrids: Saving transparency. * How to reduce the number of lights to consider (repuires knowledge of space partitioning): * Tiled Shading: For each tile on the screen, consider which lights affect it. * Voxelized Shading: The 3D equivalent to Tiled's 2D. * Light and shadow: * Mention drop shadows for historical reasons. * Simple shadowmapping * PSSM

    • There are further quality improvements, see the papers

  • Space partitioning: Octree and all the rest.