Personal 3D, a PC-based Renderer

Independent Research, Computer Science

Sean C. Landis, Cornell University

Spring 1997

Personal 3D, or P3D is a renderer that runs on Windows 95 and Windows NT. The first version of P3D fulfilled the project portion of my Masters of Engineering degree. The goals of the Masters project were:

• Implement a 3D renderer for Windows
• Apply object oriented design a 3D rendering pipeline
• Explore implementation techniques for 3D rendering
• Strengthen C++ skills
• Provide a flexible framework for others to explore 3D rendering

This research extends P3D to do the following:

• Add Phong and Gouraud shading (the renderer originally rendered wireframe images).
• Stress the object oriented design to see how easy it is to add new features.
• Support a single, adjustable light source.
• Allow scene editing from dialogs accessed by menus and a tree control.
• Fix bugs.

A web version of the on-line help explains the use and implementation of P3D.

P3D executable code and source code can be downloaded in the form of a gzipped tar file called P3D.taz. If you do not have tar.exe or gzip.exe on your computer, follow this link. P3D was developed on Windows 95 using Microsoft Visual C++ version 4.2. The source code contains a project workspace file that can be read my MS VC++.

Once you have downloaded P3D and the necessary utilities, follow the following installation steps:

1. Copy P3D.taz to the directory of your choice.
2. Open an MSDOS window and execute gzip -d P3D.taz to uncompress the tar file.
3. Execute tar -xvf P3D.tar to untar the file. This will create subdirectories.
4. Change directory to p3d\144MB\Disk1.
5. Execute setup.exe. This will start an install wizard; answer the questions as you see fit.