Archive for Mai, 2019

3D graphics on the plus/4

Dienstag, Mai 28th, 2019

I was always fascinated by 3D graphics. Actually its a long time dream of mine to do 3D graphics on the plus/4. So after 30 years i decided to write my own 3D-engine in BASIC. The objects are modeled on a PC with a CAD Programm (like „Blender“) and exported in OBJ format. I wrote a small converter (in C#), that converts OBJ files into two SEQ-files for the BASIC 3D engine. The engine is able to rotate objects in all axis (x,y,z), to scale, to shift up/down/left right and has a primitive hidden face detection. You have a dot-drawing mode for positioning and a line-drawing mode for the beauty shot. It can draw models with 4600+ vertices and polygonian faces, which is enough for a complex model like the famous space shuttle. The model data is free available at the NASA site. I had to modify the shuttle to be able to show it on the 320×200 screen of the plus/4, and it was great fun. Here some preview pictures and leave a comment, if you like (email, website not needed).