Real-time 3D Character Animation with Visual C++

2	Drawing points and polygons the hard way

Some people like to climb mountains, others prefer to fly over them sipping a chilled wine. If you are a climber then this chapter is for you. Most of this book uses the OpenGL library, which originated on the SGI platform and is now available for Windows, Mac and Unix boxes. The advantage of using such a library is that it shields much of the complexity of displaying the 3D characters we create. Another very definite benefit is that the library takes advantage of any hardware the user may have installed. The disadvantage to the climbers is that we have no understanding of how the display is actually generated at the individual pixel level. This chapter takes you through this process; if you are ...