Irrlicht | Render preview -

I have played with both a solution suggested by @Mizux in their comment and had some success with two different approaches.

This is arguably the easier of the two. It requires vcpkg installed.

See this commit for example.

Create a manifest file, vcpkg.json in the project root directory, listing all the dependencies used by the project:

Well, I found my problem. I feel stupid for not thinking about this sooner...

The problem was in the pre/suffixes, with some debugging output I realised that they were set for Linux instead of Windows, hence not founding the library file.

The reason for that is that in the CMakeLists.txt, the call to find_package was done before the call to project(), thus the MSVC variables was not set during the call to find_package, which led the script to believe it was called under Linux.

If you're going for simplicity of setup and use, I'd recommend you Unreal Engine. It not only allows you to render both in 3D and 2D, but has a lot of other functionality including scripting in c++.

If you're looking for a more lightweight solution, though not as easy, you can try using OpenGL. It is quite easy to set up - just install Code::Blocks and start with their OpenGL template. Although it is much harder to learn and use, it is very developing.

If you don't really need to use c++, you can use Unity. Although its interface is exposed through c#, its not very hard to learn for a c++ programmer. I also find it easier to use than Unreal Engine.

I would also reccomend Vulkan, which would probably the most perforamant of all of them, but well, you wanted a "simple" solution.

You can cast an ISceneNode pointer to an IMeshSceneNode pointer, if it actually points to an IMeshSceneNode object:

Create a factory function:

When you do:

it worked with this CMakeLists.txt:

Project integrate

Example integrate: SDL, SDL Mixer, Irrlicht’s Demo project (Date clone these projects: 29/07/2017)

1. Take care of SDL: build SDL

1.1. Use CMake to generate project, and build project, I assume you know how to do this.

2. Take care of SDL Mixer: Integrate SDL to SDL Mixer

2.1. Open file SDL_mixer.sln with Visual Studio (mine is Visual Studio 2015)

2.2. Set Additional Include Directories for SDL include folder

2.2.1. Right click project SDL_mixer and choose Properties (Alt+Enter)

2.2.2. Choose C/C++ (Note: set Platform to All Platforms)

2.2.3. Choose Additional Include Directories

2.2.4. Add SDL include folder for Additional Include Directories (the include folder of SDL project)

2.2.5. Click Ok… – and now you successfully set Additional Include Directories. By now, the error like: [Cannot open include file: 'SDL_loadso.h': No such file or directory SDL2_mixer] should be gone. Build project SDL2_mixer and you should get the new error: [LNK1104 cannot open file 'SDL2.lib' SDL2_mixer], we gonna fix that in the next step.

2.3. Set Additional Library Directories for SDL output folder

2.3.1. In SDL2_mixer Properties dialog, choose Linker (Note: set Platform to All Platforms)

2.3.2. Choose Additional Library Directories

2.3.3. Add SDL output folder for Additional Library Directories (The folder contains the file SDL2.lib after you build the project SDL2)

2.3.4. Click Ok…

2.4. Now build other project in SDL_mixer solution (native_midi, timidity), with the experience from step 2.2, 2.3, you can build these projects just fine.

2.5. Build the project SDL_mixer again, you should build it successfully by now.

3. Take care of Irrlicht’s Demo project: Integrate SDL and SDL mixer into this Demo project

3.1. Open BuildAllExamples_vcXX.sln which contains Demo project (I use Visual Studio 2015 so I open the file ..\trunk\examples\BuildAllExamples_vc14.sln)

3.2. First thing first, build Irrlicht project.

3.3. Now your purpose is to play some sound in this Demo project, so uncomment the code: #define USE_SDL_MIXER in the file ..\trunk\examples\Demo\CDemo.h

3.4. Set Additional Include Directories for SDL include folder (refer step 2.2)

3.5. Build Demo project again, you may have the error like [cannot open source file "SDL/SDL.h" Demo], to fix this, in file CDemo.h change [# include and # include ] to [# include "SDL.h" and # include "SDL_mixer.h"]

3.6. Build Demo project again, you may have the error like [Error C2664 'SDL_RWops *SDL_RWFromFile(const char *,const char *)': cannot convert argument 1 from 'irr::core::string>' to 'const char *' Demo], to fix this, in file CDemo.cpp, change [ballSound = Mix_LoadWAV(mediaPath + "ball.wav"); and impactSound = Mix_LoadWAV(mediaPath + "impact.wav");] to [ballSound = Mix_LoadWAV((mediaPath + "ball.wav").c_str()); and impactSound = Mix_LoadWAV((mediaPath + "impact.wav").c_str());]

3.7. Build Demo project and you should have the error [Error LNK2019 unresolved external symbol _SDL_RWFromFile referenced in function "private: void __thiscall CDemo::startSound(void)" (?startSound@CDemo@@AAEXXZ) Demo] we fix these error in the next step

3.8. Set SDL2.lib and SDL2_mixer.lib for Additional Dependencies

3.8.1. Choose Linker > Input

3.8.2. Choose Additional Dependencies

3.8.3. Add SDL2.lib and SDL2_mixer.lib.

3.9. Create a folder called SDL_lib, and put the following files into this folder

• SDL2.lib

• SDL2_mixer.lib

3.10. Set Additional Library Directories for the SDL_lib folder you just created above.

3.11. Build the Demo project again, now you should build it successfully.

3.12. Hit F5 to run the Demo project, you should get the error like: The program can’t start because SDL2.dll is missing …ect… . Just copy the file SDL2.dll and SDL2_mixer.dll into the output directory of Demo project (where the file which is build named Demo.exe located, in my case: ..\trunk\bin\Win32-VisualStudio)

3.13. Hit F5 again, and enjoy.

Conclusion:

In this whole step by step tutorial, you only have to understand the steps: 2.2, 2.3, 3.8. These are the core of this whole thing. So the key words are: Additional Include Directories, Additional Library Directories, Additional Dependencies

Also, you can check this video if these text above bored you: https://youtu.be/0TlVpiQbFiE (video title SDL 2 Made Easy Tutorial 19 - Mixer [Sound & Music]), the video is not this tutorial, but you can see how to set Additional Library Directories, ect,…

PS: sorry, I did try to format the answer to make it easier to look at, but this is the best I can format the answer.

I've thought of two ways to do this; neither are very graceful - not helped by Irrlicht restricting us to spherical polars.

NB. the below assumes rcdf is centered at the origin; this is to make the rotation calculation a bit more straightforward. Easy to fix though:

1. Compute the center point (the translational offset) of rcdf
2. Subtract this from all the points of rcdf
3. Perform the procedures below
4. Add the offset back to the result points.

Pre-requisite: scaling

This is easy; simply calculate the ratios of width and height in your rcdf to your original image, then call setScaling.

Method 1: matrix inversion

For this we need an external library which supports 3x3 matrices, since Irrlicht only has 4x4 (I believe).

We need to solve the matrix equation which rotates the image from X-Y to rcdf. For this we need 3 points in each frame of reference. Two of these we can immediately set to adjacent corners of the image; the third must point out of the plane of the image (since we need data in all three dimensions to form a complete basis) - so to calculate it, simply multiply the normal of each image by some offset constant (say 1).

(Note the points on the original image have been scaled)

The equation to solve is therefore:

(Using column notation). The Eigen library offers an implementation for 3x3 matrices and inverse.

Then convert this matrix to spherical polar angles: https://www.learnopencv.com/rotation-matrix-to-euler-angles/

Method 2:

To calculate the quaternion to rotate from direction vector A to B: Finding quaternion representing the rotation from one vector to another

1. Calculate the rotation from the original image's normal (i.e. the Z-axis) to rcdf's normal => quaternion P.

2. Take the midpoint of AB from the diagram in method 1, and rotate it with the quaternion P (http://www.geeks3d.com/20141201/how-to-rotate-a-vertex-by-a-quaternion-in-glsl/) => vector U.

3. Calculate the rotation from U to the midpoint of DE => quaternion Q

4. Multiply in the order Q * P, and convert to Euler angles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_between_quaternions_and_Euler_angles

(Not sure if Irrlicht has support for quaternions)