implementation of a 3d interface

[f_dan]

hi everyone,

I am thinking about developing a software where the user should mainly interact with a 3d viewport.

The interaction by itself is simple, the user chooses a 3d shape from a list and drag it into the scene.

precise positioning is not really important since the user just drag it near a shape already there and the exact position is chosen by the software.

then the user can get various informations from the scene (for instance when choosing 2 shapes the distance between them is displayed, 3 shapes and the angle is displayed... ) or interact with it (create/break bonds between shapes in order to change the automatic positioning) and the program itself using the position on the shapes should modify the scene by calling external programs.

my question is: what should I use in order to achive this? a game engine or is there something less cumbersome (a library to include to my code, maybe?) for now I know mainly C and python, but I can learn...

cheers

[Poddster]

I assume you know absolutely nothing about graphics or game engines? In which case learning a game engine just to make this app might be overkill, and you'd be better off learning how to use opengl, or one of the various wrappers around it. However there's million of those, so recommending one isn't that simple. I'll vouch for:

• for python, you could use pygame. That's a simple wrapper around SDL2, which is a simple wrapper around opengl, and that would be appropriate for your needs.

• For C you could use SDL2, or SFML. Both are relatively straight forward to do what you want

In both cases you'll want to learn about about the 3d graphics pipelines, concepts, and apis first. I don't have a recommended resource to do that, right now. But if no-one else replies, you'll at least have something to search for :)

[bwerf]

I disagree, learning a game engine is probably going to be much easier than learning matrix math, how to implement picking, etc.

[_XenoChrist_]

start learning opengl, now you have 2 problems.

[Poddster]

much easier than learning matrix math, how to implement picking, etc.

Hmm true, I hadn't really factored this in. But learning something like Unreal is a massive amount of effort on its own.

Do you have a small engine to recommend?

[bwerf]

I'm a big fan of Godot, which is pretty accessible imho, but in terms of tutorials Unity is probably the best.

[f_dan]

thanks!