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What do the 3D Maths commands in db do??? How do I use them??

I've seen this question asked a couple of times, and I've always seen a couple of smart arsed people say "You have to understand maths and vectors to understand these commands". Well, I do understand maths, and I do understand vectors, but all those years a go when I was doing my Maths A Level, Mr Lynch did not teach me to understand dbpro syntax for "BUILD PERSPECTIVE RHMATRIX4". Shame on him.

I've searched for tutorials with no luck, but I'm assuming there must be one or more out there, because I can't believe those of you that are using these commands intuitively understood that "CATMULLROM VECTOR4" did function "x", and understood the syntax.

If anyone has any info, please let me know. I only ask because I'm designing an open-source multi-use physics engine, which you can apply to pretty much anything that moves, and I have the feeling these vector commands may come in handy. Oh, working free-flight rotation will help too.

they're actually a piece of piss to understand... i'd suggest you look at my vectors post below which has the actual math for the more common types of vector/3Dmath

catmullrom is just a form of equal point interpolation between 2 points (a physics term)
RHMatrix4 is just a Right Handed Matrix ... which means that it is a matrix which has been created from Right to Left rather than Left to right, this affects the Triangulation and the Texture Referrencing, i believe this particular type of matrix is created specifically to do perspective based shader effects, suchas the Fur one thats in the NVSDK 6.0 or Dx8/9SDKs

alot of the functions are actually pretty simple when you read the small blurb on them, they make alot of sense to what they're for.

Cheers Raven for the info. Here's another question though .. what makes storing the 3D coordinates of an object, for example, better in a vector3 set rather than three variables? Can you just kinda give me an idea of the power and/or use of using these vector commands instead of manual stuff.

the difference is so mininal for darkbasic itself... yet annoyingly they couldn't be further different in terms of use.



is identical to



now both will create 12bytes of memory in which you can store 3 floats, however the difference being is that Make Vector3(Vector) will return the memory pointer of where the Vector has been stored which the 3D Maths use to alter the Vector's data ... whereas the Data type of the Vector you don't access the memory and use pointers to grab the memory but you do it with the objects

so like a Vector3 would be



and i'd return the 3 floats of data from the Vector memory point
another difference is that it is possible to pass memory pointers into functions and out again... whereas it is current impossible to do with with the data types.

really the only reason to use these over manual manipulation and setup is to make everything alot easier and simpler. And really it allows you to concentrate on more important things than recreating the basics of 3D Maths, its easier easier and cheaper (speed wise) to handle a dword pointer return throughout your main program than it is to carry 3 floats for each vector you use.

alot of people were wanting to know a while back why DBpro uses a base of 16mb when you run it ... most of the ram it uses is actually Ram it has set aside for private use for dealing with types, vectors, matrix etc...
the Vector Number you provide is effectively the offset from the memory base they're set on

so say vectors are range 0x00A000 -> 0x00AFFF and Matrix4 are 0x00B000 -> 0x00BFFF ... i'd be the base address plus the the index multiplied by the number of bytes, in this case 1*12

so would be ->


and it'll then return the base address at which your data stored, which you can then pass onto other functions and let them handle the data.

i'm still pretty new to how the pointers are working within DBpro as i've not used them alot and the help isn't grand on it - but i think i'm finally getting the hang of them. you can make you're own data types in this fashion, reserving your own memory ... if you do it through a function then you can setup thier access and include Arrays and such in them

[edit-]
lol oki i think i need another cuppa tea before i can get a post right in one go (^_^)

"Referrencing, i believe this particular type of matrix is created specifically to do perspective based shader effects, suchas the Fur one thats in the NVSDK 6.0 or Dx8/9SDKs"

One can discount that, as Raven relates absolutely EVERYTHING to shaders. Remind me what FVF stands for again Raven

Rob if i were you i wouldn't be so cocky... as i've not seen you produce anything that could possibly offbalance me on the knowlage of how DarkBasicPro is ultilising alot of this stuff.

you use the Matrix4's specifically for visual effect referrencing within DirectX, standard 4x4 (16) matrix tiles which can be quickly edited and used as part of reference for anything - oftenly they're not actually used themselves in anything except calculations, however it is possible to show thier references with the veiw, projection & world matrix4 commands provided you already have a real matrix in place which is capable of displaying them. as they're only ever virtual matrix residing in the memory it means you can use them alot faster for accessing and manipulation than a full matrix which isn't just sets of points, but normal data with texture data and polygon data etc...

until you have something useful to add, keep quite and keep out of the post, i've had about as much as i can take with someone who is barely outta damn'd diapers who hasn't produced any code or effects or even any valid help to for anyone to use - just here to make your damn'd sarcastic comments, so either you can explain this much better or just shut the hell up, sit back and read what is written and perhaps you might actually learn something!

Handbags at 10 paces.
Everyone stand back.

(^_^) hopefully i can use my mom's ... she keeps a usp45 in it hehee

I'll overlook the bitch slapping and portable leather lipstick carrying equipment to say thank you raven for your help. Although some of the commands still make little sense to me, I've taken this as an insentive to delve a little deeper, and they seem to offer the potential for some use. I've actually just placed an order with Amazon for a couple of 3D programming maths and physics books to see if I can improve the theory for my physics engine. Maybe that'll shed more light on the whole thing.

Cheers.

a 3D programming maths in physics is not going to help under stand all the commands.becos a lot of the commands are just thing that 3D engine ues so to get all the all the commands you need a book on 3D engine.

but if your just uesing them for a physics engine the book your buy is more them anufe

--Dr 0--

Remind me what FVF stands for again? [Hmm... maybe I should make that part of my sig]

As for me not being helpful, I think that I have given assistance to quite a few newbies on this forum and RGT.

You should seriously go and take stress management classes. I used to regard myself as quite a temperamental, volatile guy, then I saw your posts and I ain't even in the same league as far as those characteristics are concerned.

Plus, you haven't actually produced any fantastic DBP apps either yet, when I see the Ciyanna GameStudio (is the name right?) I will make a judgement then.

Anyhow, I suggest that Fallout visit www.geometryalgorithms.com and www.gamedev.net for much more useful explanations of this kind of physics. The MSDN also has an awful lot of useful info on understanding what matrixes are for and how to use them, I don't really think that they apply to physics engines though as they are essentially created for translation of 3D to 2D.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/directx9_m/directx/ref/ns/microsoft.directx/s/matrix/matrix.asp

Rob you tell me what FVF stands for and explain what it is perhaps, or more important WHY and HOW you use it!
From what i've seen around here you hand out very little if ever and oftenly not very helpful advice to anyone atleast here - perhaps this is a different story over at RGT, but somehow i sure as hell doubt it.

quite frankly i'd suggest you backdown on this now because i'm not in the mood to be having a little kid trying to be a smartass right now ... you're so damn'd young around DarkBasic how the hell could you possibly know how much i've actually done over the past 4years?
do you know how many projects i've helped with?

*sigh*....not another "My dad is stronger than yours" debate starring Raven and "whoever made a funny that pissed him off this time around" . I'm starting to see why someone was banned from certain forums .


Guys, try to "take the high road" for once, if someone is bugging you, just ignore him


(P.S: See all those smilies. It means that this post was written in good humour and I'm in no way attacking anybodys pride or skills with it....just in case somebody thinks otherwise).


Anyway, to get back to topic (finally), then I think it matters little wether you store your coordinates in 3 variables or use the vector3 type (apart from managing the vector3 resource numbers and there's maybe a DLL call involved in creating the vector3 type, not sure though). The real reason for using the vector types are the command in the 3dmaths category, alot of useful basic vector manipulation commands that you can use.

It's just a matter of using them when it makes sense. In the CrystalQuest/XQuest clone I'm writing a.t.m I use 3 variables (rolled up into a type) to store the position of every entity in the game, but I use vector2 types to store the heading and speed of every entity (no z-axis movement in the game). Doing this I can use the 3dmaths commands such as dot product to calculate the rotation of all the entities (so that my spaceship isn't flying sideways for example).

Cheers,
Klukk.

klukk if this was his first and only post doing this it would be simple to just ignore it ... but if i let him get away with insulting me like this in almost everypost, then everyone thinks they have a right to do it.
i'm not going to sit here and be insulted all the time by morons who are not there to do anything except insult me.

and the most annoying thing is that the forum moderators do bugger all about people who act like this - quite frankly thier behaviour is intolerable and shouldn't be allowed to continue, if they want to blatently insult someone they can go to thier own forum and do it in a topic where people are not trying to help others.
explain to me why i should put up with this kinda bollocks all the time from selected user making snide comments? put bluntly these people are just lucki they're protected behind a forum because if you think there is anyway in hell i'd accept this behaviour towards me in real-life then you've got another thing comming... if they don't like my help then they can post thier own oblivious to what i've written NOT make comments just to rile me up.

there are quite a few users that need to damn'd well grow up and start becomming useful in this community rather than believing they have the right just to piss me off whenever they come on for whatever ungodly reason they believe they have the right to.

not gonna be pushed around, and not gonna be made fun of by a punk who should learn to keep the comments in check ... i don't go around doing this to him so why the hell should i gain this kind of treatment?

Perhaps people make these comments because they know that they will piss you off and 'cause you to spew profanity in return . Just ignore those comments, don't even comment on them...soon enough people will tire of it and eventually stop it (well, in a perfect world, but it works better thank letting everybody winding you up).



Erm, just out of curiosity, what would you do in real-life? Beat them up?

"you're so damn'd young around DarkBasic "

I've been with DarkBASIC since DBC version 1.05.

FVF = Flexible Vertex Format, IIRC it describes the contents of verticies stored in a stream of data. Normally you use it to set the data to be processed by functions which expect the vertices in a given order. In DirectX the CloneMeshFVF function can be used to copy a mesh using an FVF code. Obviously this has relations to shaders though but indirectly.

"From what i've seen around here you hand out very little if ever and oftenly not very helpful advice to anyone atleast here"

I disagree with that, even just looking through the threads on this page of the forum. If you are referring to 3D modelling, as that is your raison d'etre, then of course not.

"little kid trying to be a smartass right now ... "

I am 16, and you are about 20? Actually, at least a 1/3rd of DBers are in this age group. If you insult me in this way, I fear that you will be insulting an awful lot of other DB users to.

Can I ask you what you would do in real life if I talked to you as in this conversation thus far?

if someone insults me i make sure they never do it again... i don't have to touch people to make them fear me

and i've not seen you so called help hardly anywhere, to do with anything within this forum. everytime i've really noticed you popup you've made some idol comment and left, either loosly based on the topic at hand or to my a quip at someone elses expense.

also if thats what you believe the FVF is in a nutshell then you need to rethink, because what it is, is a flexible format which can be described in any order within DirectX... the version number respects to the setup structure of the data contained within which with the constant class of that structure allows DirectX to use that data in a virtual capacity (store in memory in runlength) for use within the program though the standard FVF structure class commands.
the data itself contained within are in FVF Data Packet form allowing the structure type to be created into the memory by simply shifting data around in the packets allowing quick rearranging of the data for the needs that arise.
its also allows the DirectX application to contruct the faces for the object in realtime allowing you to define the LOD and Cull Z/WBuffer depth of the rendering.
this was developed primarily for speed reasons yet the version currently used today has been particularly setup to allow the use of Shaders to use the format data in an intergrated capacity.
it also ment that DirectX Rendering engine used a universal format which wasn't any real data but virtual data which could be loaded and depicted from any other format.
the larger the format data packets the more depth and features you can natively add to this format upon rendering ... which can be used in any fashion you choose.
there is no indirect relation to shaders here, the current development was specifically for shaders allowing for the greater speed needed to make sure that these features ran fast enough without major enumeration of hundreds of data types just to render a single format.

and as far as DBpro was conserned in 3.1 effectly there were there JUST for the shaders unless you understood howto use them ... however in 4 they are the backbone of the 3D pipeline

@Fallout

The only real difference in left-handed and right-handed coordinate systems is the direction of the z-axis relative to the X-Y plane. So, theoretically, the only difference in the result of a "BUILD FOV RHMATRIX" and a "BUILD FOV LHMATRIX" should be that if you multiply each by the same vector, the z component of the result will be negated in one relative to the other.

I'm sure vectors/matrices will be a much more consice way of doing some 3D math operations in DBPro as opposed to using separate components, cos(), sin(), etc. But as far as the documentation describes, the 3DMATHS commands are really just a means to set up vectors and matrices that are needed by the shader commands.

It'd be nice if Vector was a built-in data type that was accepted by commands like "POSITION OBJECT" or "SCALE OBJECT", etc., but I don't think they can be used that way currently. It'd be nice if we could be able to name them and use them like a user-defined type in our programs like:



It seems strange to me that a Profesional language designed for programming 3D games doesn't include even simple built-in data types and operations for 3D vectors and matrices. Why are we limited to using three set of commands/functions (for X, Y and Z) and no compact way? Who knows...

well i've setup my dbpro with a .inc.dba which has in it stuff like

#constant vec3 set vector3

you'd then can go

vec3 c1,0.0,0.0,0.0

and now c1 is a vector X(0.0),Y(0.0),Z(0.0)

and you get a more assembly like language, i quite like the #constants for this very reason

Hmmmm.... #constant... don't see that one in the docs anywhere... not quite as flexible as C pre-processor macros. Doesn't help much for doing what I describe above, but does cut down a little on the typing.

well for what you want you could just use a function like



[edit-]

just a minor edit to make it more friendly

"i don't have to touch people to make them fear me"

Raven, in my experience, verbal abuse and aggressive taunts do not make people fear you.

I do help people out, you know that as well as I do and to say that I don't is just a lie.

This is my last O/T post, and I will restate that I can see clearly why you were banned from RGT, it is lucky for your sake that the mods here are more tolerant.

You know, I once met this German guy on another forum, absolute genius, but arrogant beyond belief, however when I met him in real life at a convention, he was a pretty nice normal guy, lets hope we can say the same for you eh?

i'm being serious Rob, i've not seen you help many people at all... you are just an over and over smartass all the time.
no one cept GuyS knows exactly why i've been banned from RGT, and its nothing to do with more tollerant mods that i am still within this forum - bringing something like that up has no reference here and its quite amusing to see people stab at why this happened, but also annoying how ignorant people can be because they'd rather assume something than ask for the truth on anything.

i don't have to verbally abuse or taunt someone to for them to fear me either... and IF we do ever meet, well don't expect me to be any different about something like this. if anyone was even close to acting like you have been and being totally disrespectful of someone else like you have been to me then i'd do something about it, and don't think this would apply to just myself - but if you were like that with any of my friends i'd come down on you like a tonne of bricks.
the only difference between me here, and me offline is that here i'll actually put down things that i'm thinking ... i'm a very quiet person in real life, which if you don't believe just ask Rose.

you'll find certain people are much braver online and will say things to you they wouldn't if they could see your face - and i have a feeling that your are one of these people.
i'm sure people like your own father have a way of making you get scared without having to do anything, just give you a true irrational fear because you know they're serious about what they say - thats if they bother saying anything at all... as i said be glad we havn't met.

one is a kid for listening, and the other is a kid insisting

get over yourselfs

Indeed. Raven, I work on a basis of respect, not fear. To me, that is far more valuble. And believe me, I am the same in real life as I am here

firstly cycloid... you really think it's wise to get in the middle of something?
it surprises me how stupid some people can be, people like you are only here to aggrovate a situation or to try to be a peacemaker. Eitherway the comments are not worth it so unless you're going to make some more comments about Vectors and to help Frobscottle - KEEP THE HELL OUTTA THIS - as this is between myself and Rob.

secondly, Rob if you actually want to get on with anyone perhaps the best way isn't by insulting them at every turn ... i don't care if its because of respect or fear for me that people don't make those kind of comments, as long as they know that they should keep them to themselves and no act so damn'd disrespectfully.

to be quite honest i dont' give a shit if you like me, or the man in the bleedin' moon likes me. just because you don't like someone DOES NOT give you the right to act like a jerk towards them, making very disrespectful comments and such.



this is quite a big insult, which i've noticed alot of people won't come out directly with such things towards me - only believe they can get away with subtle stuff which for some reason ya'll think i won't notice.
you sure as hell don't end up where i am, knowing everything that i do by being a moron ... and its a further insult on the original insult that you would believe to take me for one here!

if you work on the basis of respect then you are sure as hell going the wrong way about it with me - as there is no way i could ever respect someone who acts in this fashion... this is why there are quite a few of the older members who i don't respect either.
you want to dislike me or someone then fine do so... but you keep that attitude at the login page of this forum beause it ain't welcome.

thing is at the end of the day, like me or hate me i'm still a very valueable source of information for anything you would want to achieve ... if you want to disagree on stated facts or want to prove me wrong on things i say, well fine you can be a petty person like - only a fool would even try, because you'll just ruin a valueable thread.
there are ways of proving me wrong about things i say without openly insulting me about it, which is what always starts off the flamewars - to me its funny because its always the same few people usually who believe its big and clever rather than helping to try and show me up.

what exactly is big and clever about insulting someone, trying to make them out to be some kinda idiot, and generally acting like some smartass?
wouldn't it be much better to post your own points on something unrelated?
its just terrible because by the way certain users act you can tell exactly which forum they reside in more and prefer more, and its quite obvious.
RGT crowd make it thier business to try to belittle people just for a laugh, Apollo crew is more up for talking about things civially - well cept me of course, but there always has to be atleast one person who is just different eh.
you don't think this is right then go around the forum and check the posts where RGT user's feature ... its just sad an pathetic, especially as generally the RGT guys are older and should be better behaved.

ya know i said back at christmas the atomsphere wouldn't ever go back to how it was, look at us 4months on and i appear to be right - like to see any of the apollo users honestly tell me that the atomsphere around here is the same as before the RGT memebers decided to come here more often.
notice how we also appear to be for them when they get bored, not active for like weeks at a time then all of a sudden a burst of activity from some just to make comments cause some aggro and ... poof they're gone again.

and you maybe wondering what does this have to do with disrespectful behaviour, but that right there is the heart of this matter isn't it. ya'll get bored and with that attitude you've picked up over at RGT you belive you can make whatever comments, and because over at RGT you know i'd just reply back in a fashion that would be moderated, locked and banned you'll try the same crap here. well we ain't here for your amusement nor are we here for any other bull like that... you wanna get your jollies from being jerks, go back over to RGT and do it there - then it can be moderated, deleted and all is forgotten eh?

ya know my cost for actually not taking the bull that ya'll pull at the damn time is a possible ban which i've been threatened with from indi who did a whole 180° after my banning... "can't fight 'em, so joint 'em!" springs to mind with that guy.
:: sighs :: i'm tired here, to be honest i wish i could just punch a few people in the fact - but in a forum all we have are the words we can type... sometimes i think that is a shame because you can say so much more in a single action to a degree someone will understand because of a language which is so archaic in it useage its just stupid and causes alot of misunderstanding an multiple interpretations.

i'm going to apologise for hijacking this thread and hope that some of this has gone into the thick heads of certain individuals... however if you see a post next flaming me down then we can safely assume that it didn't, but then again i have real questions if people actually ever bother reading my whole posts.

Listen Raven, clearly we have our differences, please make any replies to this via email to avoid

a) Dragging others into this
b) Getting to far from the main point.

If anyone wants to discuss vectors, a new thread should be started and I am sure that a gentlemenly agreement says that this should be reserved for its purpose.

My point about the shader comment was not really intended as an insult, but obviously as a shader "artist", you sometimes relate stuff to shaders which is used more commonly for other purposes, or so some think.

"but then again i have real questions if people actually ever bother reading my whole posts."

I read the whole of the above post - and that isn't a first, but one can obviously appreciate that some of us here only get short breaks to check Apollo.