Hi, I''ve decided that I''ve pretty much mastered 2D DirectDraw programming, etc. and I can see that the market for 2D games is nowhere as big as 3D games. After reading around and asking a couple of people, I''ve decided that my move into 3D programming is going to be using Direct3D. I''ve been looking for weeks for a decent beginner''s guide site / tutorial / etc. but all I have found use completely different methods...... As you''re all such great 3D programmers I''m jsut wondering what did you use to learn Direct3D? I have some money, but don''t want to spend over about £50 (uk). Apparently there are some good books - but when I look on amazon.com the reviews say otherwise; everybody is saying different things! Please, if you have any places where I can find a complete beginner''s guide? Thanks, Kieren

I learned the basic from a tutorial called by Mark Feldman,
I found on www.perplexed.com/GPMega. The article
is a little outdated nowadays, but it could still prove
mighty helpful.

About the books, I don''t see any reason to by one, the SDK docs, and internet tutorials
does the job...

Greets Tobias

I learned most of the stuff that I know about Direct3D is from the DirectX SDK help files and example code tutorials that came along with it. They''ll give you a start, but there''s some stuff that isn''t really well explained in there. Maybe you should start there if you haven''t already and then branch out by experimenting with the code there (changing variables here and there and other stuff).

I''ve looked in the help files and examples, etc. but there''s no proper documentation. I''ve just ordered the DX7 SDK (i was using DX5 SDK), so maybe that has better docs?

The best thing I know of to learn direct3d is a tutorial called "Initializing Direct3D in 4 easy steps and 11 hard steps." It was on the GPMega site at perplexed.com, but that site has been down since New Year''s.

But, I found lots of them by doing a yahoo search for +direct3d +initialize +tutorial.

By the way, I wouldn''t buy a book. I have several directx books, and each of them have about two pages of useful information. I think it''s a grand conspiracy among the writers. Look on the net for examples.

As awful as it might be, the SDK is your best bet. I have three suggestions:

1) Learn OpenGL first. This isn''t because I favor OpenGL (I like D3D better), but OpenGL has much more information on it. And since D3D is actually very similiar to OpenGL, your knowledge of OpenGL will help you greatly in D3D.
2) Start off by using D3DX to do all the initialization and texturing stuff.
3) Don''t use anything but the latest version of D3D. The other versions are awful (well, D3D 6 is decent, but it''s not near as good as 7)

Good luck

--TheGoop