Contents User Forum Source Index APIs by Task APIs by Level Data Selected APIs by Task This page lists the most commonly used G3D APIs grouped into functional tasks: Debugging Profiling and Optimization 2D Graphical User Interface Scene Graph Shadows Images and Video Strings File I/O Ray Tracing and Physics Network Boldface links designate the most common and easy-to-use features. Not all API entry points are shown in this index. Debugging debugAssert Assertion macro with friendly dialog box in DEBUG builds screenPrintf Prints information that repeats every frame to the screen debugPrintf Prints to the 3D console, terminal, and log.txt consolePrintf Prints to the 3D console and log.txt logPrintf Prints to log.txt GApp::debugPane Add your own debugging GUI controls to this provided window G3D::debugPrintf Prints to the terminal (Unix) or Output Window (Win) in DEBUG builds logPrintf Prints to the log.txt file (which you should regularly check for warnings!) Draw Render simple geometric primitives without loading a model debugAssertM Assertion macro with a string message in DEBUG builds alwaysAssertM Assertion macro that remains even in optimized builds GApp::catchCommonExceptions Turn uncaught exceptions into assertion failures Log Guarantees output is written to disk before Log::printf returns describeSystem Returns a string describing the current machine isValidHeapPointer Used in assertions to identify bad pointers isValidPointer Used in assertions to identify bad pointers setAssertionHook Override the behavior of assertion failures setFailureHook Override the behavior of alwaysAssertM failures in RELEASE builds GApp::showDebugText Enable GApp::debugPrintf output Profiling and Optimization Stopwatch Accurately measure the duration and effective framerate of routines RenderDevice::getTriangleCount, RenderDevice::getTriangleRate, RenderDevice::getTrianglesPerFrame Measure the GPU vertex throughput GApp::showRenderingStats Display performance information on the 3D window System::mallocPerformance, System::mallocStatus, System::resetMallocPerformanceCounters Measure heap size and detect memory leaks System::beginCycleCount, System::endCycleCount Cycle-accurate timing of very short routines 2D Graphical User Interface GuiWindow Skinnable GUI (documentation contains GUI sample code) GuiPane Container and creator of other GUI controls; obtained from a GuiWindow GEvent, GEventType Event class and type enum, used inside an event handler UserInput Pollable keyboard, mouse, and joystick state used inside an event handler GApp::onEvent, GApp::onUserInput Overridable event handlers GFont Explicitly render text GuiButton, GuiCheckBox, GuiDropDownList, GuiSlider, GuiRadioButton, GuiLabel, GuiTextBox GUI controls created by GuiPanel Widget PosedModel2D 2D object scene graph, used by Widgets for rendering Manipulator msgBox Create a new OS window popup message Scene Graph Sky Skybox, moon, sun, and stars IFSModel Rigid body ArticulatedModel Rigid bodies connected by joints, loads 3DS and IFS models BSPMap Quake 3 map MD2Model Quake 2 character PosedModel Static object that is prepared for rendering. Exposes geometry and adjacency information GCamera Pinhole perspective camera abstraction Shape Geometric primitives primarily used for bounding volumes and debugging Shadows Shadow rendering algorithms first determine shadowed locations, and then paint ambient illumination everywhere, and finally add illumination only in non-shadowed areas. There are two major algorithms for determining the shadowed locations in real-time, shadow volumes and shadow maps. G3D supports both, on programmable and fixed function hardware. ShadowMap Shadow map allocation and rendering PosedModel::renderShadowedLightPass Render shadow volume shadows on any model (when used with begin/endMarkShadows) RenderDevice::configureShadowMap Fixed function shadow map rendering Texture::createEmpty(...TextureFormat::DEPTH24, Texture::Settings::shadow) Create an empty shadow map SuperShader::configureShadowShader Programmable pipeline shadow map rendering PosedModel::renderShadowMappedLightPass Render shadow mapped shadows on any model beginMarkShadows, markShadows, endMarkShadows Compute and render stenciled shadow volumes Image Processing Draw::rect2D Stretch a Texture over a rectangle on screen Texture GPU image representation Framebuffer An "off-screen" rendering surface used for image processing on the GPU Image3 RGB floating point image Image1 Monochrome floating point image Image4 RGBA floating point image Image1uint8 8-bit Monochrome image Image3uint8 24-bit RGB image Image4uint8 32-bit RGBA image Color1, Color3, Color4 Floating-point monochrome, RGB, and RGBA color (no clamping) Color1uint8, Color3uint8, Color4uint8 8-bit Monochrome, 24-bit RGB, and 32-bit RGBA color (clamped to 0-1 / 0-255) GImage Fast but harder to use mono-8, RGB-24, or RGBA-32 image Map2D Templated image class, e.g., for creating normal maps or arbitrary grids of values WrapMode Specifies how out-of-bounds image locations are treated for Texture, Map2D, and Image classes gaussian1D Generate 1D blur filter coefficients GaussianBlur Fast GPU 1D blur ToneMap Gamma correct, adaptation, and bloom for realistic lighting String Processing beginsWith, endsWith format Convert numbers to strings (a safe sprintf) isSlash, isWhiteSpace, isDigit, isNewline, isLetter, isQuote stringSplit, stringJoin toUpper, toLower Change case trimWhitespace Remove blanks at the beginning and end of a string STR Macro for creating large blocks of quoted text, usually used with G3D::Shader TextInput(TextInput::FROM_STRING, ...) Tokenizer for parsing complex strings File I/O BinaryInput, BinaryOutput TextInput, TextOutput getFiles, getDirs Get a directory listing, including wildcards readWholefile, writeWholeFile Any Can hold any common value and read/write tables of named values. Very useful for making configuration files copyFile createTempFile filenameContainsWildcards, filenameBaseExt, filenameExt, filenamePath, parseFilename Filename parsing and manipulation isDirectory, fileIsNewer, fileExists, fileLength File testing and comparison Ray Tracing and Physics Ray tracing and physical simulation both compute intersections between geometric primitives. G3D distinguishes between "moving" collision detection, where two objects are moving with relative constant velocity; and "fixed" detection where where the relative velocity of the objects is zero. The two problems are related. A "moving point" is the same as a fixed ray, a "moving sphere" is a fixed capsule, and so on. Thus for ray tracing one often uses "moving point" collision detection instead of rays (which is reasonable, since ray tracing simulates photons moving around a scene). CollisionDetection Moving and fixed collisions between many kinds of primitives Ray, Sphere, Plane, Box, AABox, Triangle, Plane, Line, Cylinder, Capsule, Shape Geometric primitives MeshAlg Routines for operating on triangle meshes AABSPTree Axis-aligned binary space partition tree for O(log n) collision detection PointAABSPTree AABSP tree optimized for zero-extent objects. Primarily used as a photon map GCamera::worldRay Obtain the ray through a pixel Image3, Image4 Useful for software rendering output and texture maps Vector3::reflectionDirection, Vector3::refractionDirection Network See also the Networking Overview. ReliableConduit Message-based TCP infrastructure ideal for most games DiscoveryClient, DiscoveryServer, DiscoveryAdvertisement LAN-browsing infrastructure NetListener Server-side way of listening for incoming connections BinaryInput, BinaryOutput Used by serialize/deserialize methods to binary encode messages for transfer. NetAddress IP, port, and hostname addressing LightweightConduit Message-based UDP infrastructure. Allows multi-cast and NAT traversal, but at the cost of unreliable transfer. Hosted by