Programming with Panda3D

The Programming with Panda section of the manual attempts to enumerate all the various functionality that Panda3D provides.

This manual does not attempt to be complete in the sense of listing every class, function, and method provided by Panda3D. If that’s what you’re looking for, go to the Reference Section instead.

The purpose of this manual is to:

1. List all of Panda3D’s broad capabilities,

2. Help you understand what purpose these serve,

3. Give you a general understanding of how to build games in Panda3D.

In time, though, you will need to supplement the knowledge provided by this manual by studying the Reference Section.

• The Scene Graph
  • Model Files
  • Common State Changes
  • Manipulating a Piece of a Model
  • Searching the Scene Graph
  • Instancing
  • Level of Detail
• Animated Models
  • Loading Actors and Animations
  • Actor Animations
  • Multi-Part Actors
  • Attaching an Object to a Joint
  • Controlling a Joint Procedurally
• The Configuration File
  • Configuring Panda3D
  • List of All Config Variables
  • Accessing Config Vars in a Program
• Render Attributes
  • List of All Attributes
  • Lighting
  • Materials
  • Depth Test and Depth Write
  • Fog
  • Alpha Testing
  • Color Write Masks
  • Antialiasing
  • Clip Planes
  • Tinting and Recoloring
  • Backface Culling and Frontface Culling
  • Occlusion Culling
  • Light Ramps
  • Auxiliary Bitplane Control
  • Stencil Attribute
• Texturing
  • Simple Texturing
  • Choosing a Texture Size
  • Texture Wrap Modes
  • Texture Filter Types
  • Simple Texture Replacement
  • Multitexture Introduction
  • Texture Modes
  • Texture Order
  • Texture Combine Modes
  • Texture Transforms
  • Multiple Texture Coordinate Sets
  • Automatic Texture Coordinates
  • Projected Textures
  • Simple Environment Mapping
  • 3-D Textures
  • Cube Maps
  • Environment Mapping with Cube Maps
  • Automatic Texture Animation
  • Playing MPG and AVI files
  • Multiview Textures
  • Transparency and Blending
  • Texture Management
  • Texture Compression
  • Creating New Textures from Scratch
• Shaders
  • Shader Basics
  • List of GLSL Shader Inputs
  • List of Possible Cg Shader Inputs
  • Shaders and Coordinate Spaces
  • Known Shader Bugs and Limitations
  • The Shader Generator
  • Compute Shaders
  • Cg Shader Tutorial
• Camera Control
  • The Default Camera Driver
  • Lenses and Field of View
  • Orthographic Lenses
• Sound
  • Loading and Playing Sounds and Music
  • Manipulating Sounds
  • Audio Managers
  • DSP Effects
  • 3D Audio
  • Multi-Channel
• Intervals
  • Lerp Intervals
  • Function Intervals
  • Actor Intervals
  • Sound Intervals
  • Sequences and Parallels
  • Motion Paths
  • Particle Intervals
  • Projectile Intervals
• Tasks and Event Handling
  • Tasks
  • Task Chains
  • Event Handlers
  • Coroutines
  • Main Loop
  • Threading
• GUI
  • Rendering Text
  • Rendering Images
  • DirectGUI
  • Text Fonts
  • Embedded Text Properties
• Render Effects
  • Billboard Effects
  • Compass Effects
• Finite State Machines
  • FSM Introduction
  • Simple FSM Usage
  • FSM with input
  • Advanced FSM Tidbits
• Terrain
  • The Heightfield Tesselator
  • Geometrical MipMapping
• Advanced operations with internal structures
  • How Panda3D Stores Vertices and Geometry
  • Procedurally Generating 3D Models
  • Other Vertex and Model Manipulation
  • Matrix Representation
• Render-to-Texture and Image Postprocessing
  • Common Image Filters
  • Generalized Image Filters
  • Dynamic Cube Maps
  • Low-Level Render to Texture
• Panda3D Rendering Process
  • Multithreaded Render Pipeline
  • Introducing Graphics Classes
  • The Graphics Pipe
  • Creating Windows and Buffers
  • Display Regions
  • Creating New MouseWatchers for Display Regions
  • Clearing Display Regions
  • The 2D Display Region
  • Stereo Display Regions
  • Multi-Pass Rendering
  • How to Control Render Order
  • Table of features supported per graphic renderer
• Particle Effects
  • Using the Particle Panel
  • Loading Particle Systems
  • Particle Effect Basic Parameters
  • Particle Factories
  • Particle Emitters
  • Particle Renderers
• Collision Detection
  • Collision Solids
  • Collision Handlers
  • Collision Entries
  • Collision Traversers
  • Collision Bitmasks
  • Rapidly-Moving Objects
  • Pusher Example
  • Event Example
  • Bitmask Example
  • Clicking on 3D Objects
• Object Management
  • Subclassing
  • Reference Counting
  • Removing Custom Class Instances
• Hardware Support
  • Keyboard Support
  • Mouse Support
  • Joystick Support
• Physics
  • Panda3D Physics Engine
  • Using Bullet with Panda3D
  • Using ODE with Panda3D
• Networking
  • Datagram Protocol
  • Downloading a File
  • Distributed Networking
• Advanced Loading Techniques
  • Panda Filename Syntax
  • Asynchronous Loading
  • The Virtual File System
  • Multifiles
  • Loading Resources from Memory
  • Patching
• Pathfinding using PandAI
  • Getting Started
  • Steering Behaviors
  • Pathfinding
  • Source Codes